Tigers prospect Fulmer gaining admirers

This is new. ESPN.com's Tommy Rancel has ranked the top minor league prospects for major league fantasy baseball, and there's actually a Detroit Tigers farmhand in the top spot.

It's right-hander Michael Fulmer, acquired from the New York Mets in the Yoenis Cespedes swap, a trade-deadline deal that was overshadowed by the one that sent David Price to the Toronto Blue Jays for left-hander Daniel Norris and others.

Fulmer is 3-1 with a 1.59 ERA at Double-A Erie. Before that, he was 6-2 with a 1.88 ERA at Double-A Binghamton. Overall this season, he has 104 strikeouts and 28 walks in 108 2/3 innings.

The 6-foot-3, 200-pound Fulmer might be a September call-up, according to Tigers manager Brad Ausmus, which gets him onto the fantasy guys' radar.

"There was speculation that Fulmer would fill one of the vacated spots" when Norris and Anibal Sanchez got hurt, Rancel writes. "But Randy Wolf and Buck Farmer were chosen instead. Despite being passed over now, Fulmer may still be in the mix, as he bests Wolf and Farmer in both stuff and upside.

"After dominating the Eastern League, he has arguably been better with the SeaWolves. His combination of mid-90s heat, nasty slider, advancing change-up and control should be good enough to get outs at the top level."

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And Rancel's not the only one with a high opinion of Fulmer.

He's one of five candidates for USA TODAY's annual Minor League Player of the Year award, which is selected by the newspaper's baseball staff and online voting.

You can cast your ballot here.

"The Tigers pulled in a haul of great pitching prospects at the trading deadline, and Fulmer, a former first-round pick (2011) with the Mets, may be the best of the bunch," Kevin Czerwinski writes in USA TODAY.

Contact Steve Schrader: sschrader@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @schradz.

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