Archive for Prospect

Another week, another installment of Peripheral Prospects. Through six weeks — three from me, three from esteemed colleague Brad Johnson — we have featured 26 different players with whom one or both of us express(es) some degree of infatuation.

The aim is simple: identify players who (1) have little to no hype as a prospect, having missed all major top-100 lists; (2) have not exhausted their rookie eligibility yet; and (3) are reasonably close to the majors, such that you’re not dreaming on talent that projects dubiously from the low minors. The rules are not hard-and-fast; it would be a shame to not mention certain players who we think exceed the credit they’ve been given. Accordingly, we will relax the constraints every now and then to make accommodations.

Before I dive into my weekly five, some quick housekeeping, per usual:
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This is the Fantasy Fringe Five, but is no longer named as such. This is the last time you’ll see Brad or me use that alliterative phrase to describe this series. And that’s it! Keepin’ it cryptic. This is now, until or unless we come up with something better, Peripheral Prospects. (We welcome recommendations! Leave a comment.)

That said, we might start steering this ship more deliberately in our own direction. In the spirit of Carson Cistulli’s series after which this is now loosely modeled, we will sometimes follow its self-imposed restrictions and other times elect to deviate from them — most probably, the one underlined below:

In light of same, eligibility for The Fringe Five will require (for the present, at least) the following:
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A month before the season started, I introduced a model that predicts a Minor League hitter’s chances of Major League success based on his statistics during his most recent AAA stint. I will use that same model now to update the list of the National League’s top MLB-ready outfield prospects, the key term here being MLB-ready, not prospect — the goal is to identify players who scouts may not love but stats do.

The model looks at how a hitter once performed in AAA and compares it to his known career outcome, ultimately calculating probabilities that a certain career outcome will occur. These probabilities can then be applied to current Minor League players in order to project their currently unknown career outcomes. I discuss the model’s nitty-gritty, as well as its similarities with and potential shortcomings to Chris Mitchell’s KATOH, in the link provided in this post’s first sentence. Both models share the same goal and their methodologies are almost identical, so their results can be considered comparable; mine simply takes a more subjective approach, as I will explain shortly. This is not a turf war.

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… if this nonsense with his agent(s?) ever clears up.

I feel like Debbie Downer from the classic Saturday Night Live sketch. I found reasons to dislike Yasmany Tomas, and now I’m here trying to find reasons to dislike Hector Olivera. It’s largely because I’m stubborn and would rather die by own fantasy baseball sword than someone else’s. But I haven’t seen any assessment of Olivera’s Cuban National Series (CNS) statistics beyond he hit an impressive .323/.407/.505 in his 10 years in Cuba, so I’ll attempt to expand on this.

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A big fuss has been made over the Royals considering dealing their top prospect, Wil Myers, for starting pitching help. And the fuss is for good reason. On the field, Jeff Francoeur’s totally unexpected demise left the Royals with a gaping hole to fill in right field. That reality coupled with owner David Glass’s frugalness – read the second half of this excellent bifurcated piece by Rany Jazayerli – has left many wondering why the Royals would trade almost seven seasons of a potential all-star right fielder for two years of an aging pitcher with a mortgage. But, the game played on natural grass is far different from the one that requires a username and password. Today, I’m here to tell you trading your prospects isn’t only okay, it’s encouraged in many formats. Read the rest of this entry »