As you well know, fantasy formats have long been eschewing (and ridiculing) the use of the win as a category. It tends to still hold on rather stubbornly in standard Rotisserie 5×5 formats which are also widely panned (yet this author still clings to one of those teams annually). There are a number of logical swaps for the win, and one of them has historically been the “quality start,” which is what this post is all about.

The quality start has also been criticized as being rather useless inasmuch as describing whether a pitcher performed well nor not, and yet if you don’t want to get into weighted metrics in your fantasy league, it’s still preferable to the sometimes arbitrary assignment of wins (and perhaps more on point — the arbitrary lack of assigning a win).

Just so we’re operating with the same definition, in most fantasy circles the quality start still uses the John Lowe Philly Inquirer characterization as being a starting pitcher going six innings without giving up more than three earned runs. We can punch holes in that over beers another day, but that’s our baseline for a quality start going forward.

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The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, begun in April of 2013 by the present author, wherein that same dumb author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own intution to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

For the purposes of the column, generally, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion in the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above both (a) absent from a small collection of notable preseason top-100 prospect lists and also (b) not currently playing in the majors. Players appearing on the midseason prospect lists produced by those same notable sources or, otherwise, selected in the first round of the current season’s amateur draft have also, typically, been excluded from eligibility.

For the purposes of this edition of the Fringe Five, however, I’ve altered the rules for eligibility. Owing to lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel’s excellent and ambitious organizational prospect lists, which have appeared at FanGraphs all fall and winter, readers have access to useful reports on basically every prospect with a 40-or-better future-value grade. Rather than merely regurgitate McDaniel’s work, then, what I’ve instead attempted to do here is assemble a list featuring the 10-best actual fringe prospects — which is to say, the 10 most compelling prospects to have been omitted entirely from the numbered portion of McDaniel’s organizational lists.

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The 2014 season in Nippon Professional Baseball began with the assumption Hiroshima Carp pitcher Kenta Maeda or Orix Buffaloes ace Chihiro Kaneko, or both, would follow in the footsteps of Masahiro Tanaka and head to Major League Baseball via the posting system.

Things will be the same in 2015, since neither Maeda nor Kaneko was posted in 2014. This is the new normal in Japan. As respect for NPB, already considered the second best league in the world, continues to grow, so too does the reality that MLB teams will try to swoop in and snatch up top players.

Japanese fans take this in stride these days. Hideo Nomo was vilified for leaving in 1995, but Tanaka was hailed as a hero last year as fans beamed with pride because their best proved they could play in the world’s best league. You can’t fit every good Japanese player with an “MLB ship by” tag, though, because not every player harbors a desire to leave Japan. But for those who do the door is somewhat open.

Maeda (and/or Kaneko) is still expected to be among the next group of NPB players who make the leap. Going from NPB to MLB requires a number of adjustments, and the fact that not every player makes the transition successfully is also true of players from other parts of the world as well.

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How the Idea Transpired

Reddit user DShep: Darvish Pitch Selection

My idea for this post emerged from my adult baseball league. Most pitchers threw between 70-80 MPH, but their breaking balls were released from different release points or arm slots than their fastballs and were easy to distinguish. I struck out six times in 29 at-bats for the season. Of the six times I struck out during the season, three strikeouts were against the same guy in the same game – and he wasn’t even hitting 70 MPH. He had three to four different pitches, and they all released from what looked like the same point.

He was consistent with his release point regardless of his pitch selection, making it extremely difficult to predict what pitch I would be swinging at.

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Jung-Ho Kang is coming to a Pirates game near you, and he better be on your radar as a baseball fan or fantasy manager. As with every foreign import, you have heard scouts and analysts weigh in on Kang, and you will continue to hear more reports as the season approaches. You may have heard his power will not translate to our game, that he may not even be a starter at the highest level of American baseball. I’m here to tell you that these reports starkly underrate Kang’s potential, and now you can cash in as a fantasy owner while everyone else follows the status quo. Kang has an elite swing that will allow his numbers to translate very quickly into Major League success.

Let’s jump right into some images. Here Kang is hitting a fastball out to just right of dead center field for a long home run:

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When the Rays traded Wil Myers away, while getting Steven Souza back as the only replacement outfielder in the deal, the newcomer’s name instantly received a lot of public attention. While Myers had a down year for the standards set by his pedigree and reputation, being placed in the same conversation has made Souza’s expectations a bit higher for his new organization.

Souza now comes into Tampa Bay with a recent string of strong performances in the minor leagues, and is already being projected as a potential 20 homer-20 steal player in his first full season. But how much should we trust his skills, having spent parts of eight years in the minor leagues and not debuting until his age-25 season?

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Who is Jedd Gyorko? The Padre second baseman burst onto the scene in his rookie year 2013 season, providing power numbers that outpaced any reasonable expectations for a second baseman in this era of diminishing offense. Then 2014 hit, and Gyorko wallowed in batting average misery until finally succumbing to a stint on the disabled list for plantar fasciitis. After his time off. Gyorko put up respectable numbers for the remainder of the season.

As a relatively untested, young hitter, it’s natural to wonder how much of his production to date represents his talent level going forward. Has the league adjusted to Gyorko’s tendencies, with the second half of 2014 being the product of some luck-aided inflation? Or can we write off the first half entirely and blame the injury for his poor performance, with expectations of improving on his 2013 season being a real possibility?

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The last-to-first-to-last-again Boston Red Sox have completed yet another overhaul, importingHanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval, as well as expecting full seasons from Rusney Castillo andMookie Betts, to reinforce an offense that sputtered to a 27th-overall wRC+ finish in 2014. But that’s nothing compared to the changes in the rotation, in which six of the nine pitchers who started at least 10 games last year are gone.

In place of Jon Lester, John Lackey, Jake Peavy,Rubby De La Rosa, Allen Webster and Felix Doubront, the Sox head into 2015 with a rotation fronted by Rick Porcello, Wade Miley and Justin Masterson, as well as holdovers Joe Kelly and Clay Buchholz. For a team that entered the offseason simply needing to find enough arms to field a team for the season, it’s an interesting collection of potentially useful arms.

That said, the idea of “Rick Porcello, Opening Day starter” isn’t exactly going to sell tickets, and that’s the main criticism leveled at Boston this winter: “Where’s the ace?!” Having whiffed on the chance to bring Lester back and so far unable to satisfy Philadelphia’s demands for Cole Hamels, the Red Sox don’t appear to have the guy needed to make a postseason run. Maybe they don’t, but maybe they don’t need to. Here’s why the Red Sox are just fine the way they are — for now, at least. Read the rest of this entry »

After stubbornly trying to hold on to the past long after their glory had faded, the Philadelphia Phillies have finally accepted reality, acknowledging that it’s time to commit to a rebuild and look toward the future. That process officially began when Jimmy Rollins, the best shortstop in team history, was traded to the Dodgers in December. Marlon Byrd soon followed him out the door in a trade to Cincinnati. Ryan Howard, Cliff Lee and Jonathan Papelbon are likely to follow, if the team can find any takers. It’s going to be a long season — or two or three or four, for that matter — in Philadelphia.

Sooner or later, star lefty Cole Hamels is going to be on the move as well. Because Hamels has by far the most value of any of the remaining Phillies, a potential Hamels deal is the most important thing GM Ruben Amaro Jr. has to get right in managing this rebuilding process. He can’t get this wrong, because a misfire here could set the franchise back even further — and potentially cost him his job.

No deal currently seems close, with various reports indicating that the Phillies are being “unrealistic with their expectations,” asking not only for multiple top-level prospects but also for a team to pick up most or all of the $110 million Hamels likely will be due. (Though Hamels is guaranteed only $96 million, it’s widely assumed that he will insist on his 2020 team option to be picked up immediately in exchange for him waiving his no-trade clause, pushing the total value to $110 million.)

The Phillies are a team that is rich in dollars and poor in talent. Major League Baseball has done its best to limit the avenues by which teams can acquire young talent. So why don’t the Phillies make the tough but necessary call to offer not only to eat some of Hamels’ contract, but a big part of it?

Here’s a look at the likely return the Phils will receive in exchange for Hamels and the best next steps for Philadelphia. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year, the Los Angeles Angels won 98 games, the third-highest total in the 54-year history of the franchise. They earned it, too, finishing second with a plus-143 run differential and baseball’s highest runs scored per game (4.7). They had — and have — the unquestioned best player in the game in AL MVP Mike Trout, who is headed into his age-23 season, they found a surprising breakout pitching star in Garrett Richards and they built an outstanding bullpen on the fly during the 2014 season.

Despite a disappointing showing while being swept in the ALDS against the Royals, it was a successful year for the Angels, and their main competition, the A’s, followed up their season-ending slide with a series of difficult-to-understand moves that may have set Oakland back. On the surface, the Angels would seem to be poised for another successful run in 2015.

And yet the projections don’t quite see it that way. Steamer, one of the most respected projection systems, has the Angels as only an 84-win team, five games behind the Mariners in the AL West. Have the Angels really done anything to make themselves 14 wins worse than last year? Probably not. But the projections can’t simply be tossed aside as frivolous, either — and here’s why. Read the rest of this entry »