Longshots 3/13/2019

With Carson Cistulli taking his long running 'Fringe Five' series and abandoning us all to, one can only assume, run the entire baseball ops department of the Toronto Blue Jays from a coffee shop in Maine, there's a considerable hole in the online baseball community where his style of prospect analysis used to be.  I'm neither the talented writer, nor the skilled analyst to fill that void.  What I am, however, is very bored.  In 'The Fringe Five', what Cistulli sought to provide was to "identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball" limiting his selection to prospects who did not appear on any Top Prospect lists.  I'm going to attempt to do the same, but with a far less catchy name for my project and fewer GIFs, because I'm not getting paid for this. 

As the weeks pass, I'll keep a scoreboard accounting for how many times a player has appeared on my 'Longshots' list (3 points for being featured, 1 point for an honorable mention).  For now, though, let's get started with a list of 20 players entering 2019 on my watch list (1 point for each)...

• Yonathan Daza - OF (Colorado Rockies)
• Luis Arraez - 2B (Cincinnati Reds)
• Nicky Lopez - 2B/SS (Kansas City Royals)
• Brian Miller - OF (Miami Marlins)
• Jamie Westbrook - 2B (Arizona Diamondbacks)
• John Nogowski - 1B (St. Louis Cardinals)
• LaMonte Wade - OF (Minnesota Twins)
• Xavier Fernandez - C (Kansas City Royals)
• Marshall Kasowski - RP (Los Angeles Dodgers)
• Zac Houston - RP (Detroit Tigers)
• Kevin Ginkel - RP (Arizona Diamondbacks)
• Stephen Villines - RP (New York Mets)
• Ryan Helsley - SP (St. Louis Cardinals)
• Sam Delaplane - RP (Seattle Mariners)
• Pedro Avila - SP (San Diego Padres)
• Curtis Taylor - SP/RP (Tampa Bay Rays)
• Dean Kremer - SP (Baltimore Orioles)
• Conner Menez - SP (San Francisco Giants)
• Brock Burke - SP (Texas Rangers)
• Spencer Howard - SP (Philadelphia Phillies)