There’s always something fascinating going on in the world of baseball—and there’s always something new. Every Friday morning throughout the season, heading into the weekend, inspired by Zach Lowe’s terrific “10 Things I Like” NBA column for ESPN, we present the Five Fascinations, five fun things going on in the baseball world. Also, we’d like to shout out the always excellent Ben Clemens at FanGraphs, another progenitor of a similar format. Submit your personal fascinations to will.leitch@mlb.com, or just yell at me about mine.
1) The latest Jurickson Profar resurgence
Kids, come sit around the fire, and let Uncle Will tell you about the years when Jurickson Profar was the top prospect in baseball. It’s true: Atop MLB Pipeline’s Top 100 prospects heading into the 2013 season was the
Rangers phenom, ahead of such luminaries as Zack Wheeler (No. 8), Gerrit Cole (No. 9), Christian Yelich (No. 13), Francisco Lindor (No. 14), Max Fried (No. 53) and Nolan Arenado (No. 62). One of the quiet subplots of the Rangers’ 2010-11 World Series seasons was that talent many believed to be the best in the entire organization was just about to arrive.
