If you tune into the World Series tonight, chances are pretty good that you’ll be able to watch at least one future Hall of Famer — and likely, even, that you’ll see several.

Of the participants in this year’s Series, Clayton Kershaw is already a lock. Both Carlos Beltran and Chase Utley are in the twilight of their careers but have strong cases for inclusion without doing any more work. Among younger players, Jose Altuve is already off to a great start, and early-20-somethings Carlos Correa and Corey Seager have certainly made their mark.

Meanwhile, there’s one player expected to appear in tonight’s game who occupies an in-between category. On the one hand, he hasn’t yet established unassailable Hall of Fame credentials and is past his peak. On the other, he seems poised to compile a few more reasonably productive years. Justin Verlander has a decent case for the Hall right now, but the next few seasons will determine how persuasive his case ultimately is.

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I was recently talking to J.D. Martinez about launch angle and exit velocity and the like. Besides helping me to update my language, he also told me he didn’t really track his performance by those measures. Same thing for some other metrics I mentioned. It’s clear Martinez has some substantive thoughts on hitting, though. It would be strange if he didn’t use any of the data available to him. So I asked him… what do you track? What numbers do you look at?

“I track my swings and misses in the zone,” he said. “I can deal with swing and miss out of the zone. If I’m swinging and missing in the zone, I don’t like that. That tells me something is wrong. It tells me that something is not right with my swing, I’m fouling balls off. If the ball’s in the strike zone, I should be able to hit it. There are certain situations, take a pitch, that’s fine. But when I swing and it’s a strike — especially on a fastball and I’m not hitting it — that’s not good.”

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We’ve written about a possible sea change in baseball over the last few years here, using phrases like “point of contact” and “attack angle” to better articulate the emergence of a Fly-Ball Revolution, itself another relatively new expression. Add those phrases to all the ones we’ve been compelled to learn for the benefit of Statcast alone — terms like “launch angle,” “exit velocity,” “spin rate,” etc. — and it’s obvious that our baseball dictionaries are getting an update on the fly.

Simply because we’re using a new lexicon, however, doesn’t mean we’re using it correctly — or, at the very least, that some of our assumptions couldn’t benefit from an update, as well.

With that in mind, I decided to examine some of the most notable and commonly used terms in this new language of hitting. With the help of the players themselves, perhaps we can better see what lies beneath each of them and attempt to reach something closer to a common understanding.

Fly-Ball Revolution

“I wish you wouldn’t call it the ‘fly-ball revolution,'” Daniel Murphy told me earlier in the year. “Coaches then think we’re talking about hitting the ball straight into the air. Call it the ‘high-line-drive revolution.'”

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Detroit acquired a trio of prospects from Houston last night in exchange for Justin Verlander. Two of those prospects appeared on our updated Astros top-10 list and will likely occupy a similar place in Detroit’s improving system. Before we examine the state of the Tigers’ minor-league talent, however, let’s talk about the three young men who were just traded for one of this century’s best right-handed pitchers.

The centerpiece of this package is 19-year-old Venezuelan righty Franklin Perez. Perez began the year with three dominant starts in High-A before he was shelved for a month with knee soreness. His results have been mixed but generally positive since his late-May return. Despite a few hiccups, Perez was promoted to Double-A in July and has struggled with strike-throwing at times while missing fewer bats than he did in A-ball. But ultimately, we’re talking about a 19-year-old who, despite initially training in Venezuela as a third baseman, has already pitched his way to Double-A and who, when healthy and rested, shows an ability to locate and sequence four quality big-league offerings.

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A month ago, when the dust settled on the July 31st trade deadline, the Astros had added just left-hander Francisco Liriano, whose struggles were one of the main reasons the Blue Jays failed to contend in 2017. It was an underwhelming upgrade for a team headed for the postseason, and the fact that the team thought they had a deal for Zach Britton was little solace to disappointed fans and players who hoped for more reinforcements.

Well, it took a month, but reinforcements are here, and this particular reinforcement throws really hard.

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When the non-waiver trade deadline came around, the Astros were sitting in excellent position. In large part because of that, the team didn’t make a big splash, yet that didn’t sit so well with, say, Dallas Keuchel. Certain Astros would’ve liked to see a move or two made in an effort to put the club over the top, and so far in the second half, the Astros have sputtered. And so a big splash has been made. It’s a trade that was on, and then off, and then on again — it’s a trade that was made with one minute to spare. Because of that one minute, the Astros have a new weapon for the playoff roster.

Astros get

• Justin Verlander
• Some millions of salary relief ($8 million each of next two years)

Tigers get

• Franklin Perez
• Daz Cameron
• Jake Rogers

Dave is going to have a fuller post on this later on. A post that will more deeply examine all the various impacts here. Earlier this very evening, it seemed like any Verlander trade possibility was just hanging on by a thread. But there’s nothing quite like a deadline to light some fires under some butts, and both sides get to look good here. The Astros get a front-of-the-rotation starter, who’s lately settled into a groove. The Tigers get quality prospects, having included some money to offset Verlander’s cost. Of course, trading a player like Verlander isn’t a simple matter, given everything he’s meant to the Tigers organization, but something like this was inevitable. The rebuild was always coming. Nothing is ever permanent.

Perez is a 19-year-old righty starter. Cameron is a 20-year-old center fielder. Rogers is a 22-year-old catcher. Before the year, Eric had them ranked third, 10th, and 20th in the Astros’ system, respectively. Perez just missed the overall top-100. In Baseball America’s midseason update, Perez ranked 32nd overall. He ranked second in the Astros’ system. Perez is clearly the big get, but Cameron could be a long-term center fielder, and Rogers is considered a fantastic defender with a better bat than a lot of people expected. This could become a group of three big-leaguers. The Astros didn’t get Verlander cheap.

But they’re encouraged by what they’ve seen. Just looking at things overall, Verlander has taken a step back:

What was strange about the struggling Verlander was there wasn’t an obvious reason. The stuff, if anything, had improved. The results just weren’t there. Yet, consider Verlander’s most recent nine starts:

Normal Verlander again. Perhaps even something a little better. Verlander has pitched like one of the best starters around, and because of his history, it wasn’t going to take much to convince another team that he’d found his way forward. Verlander has made necessary adjustments before. It looks like he’s made them again. This might be a clue:

Maybe it has nothing to do with Verlander taking something back off of his slider. Could be something or anything else. But here’s where we are: Verlander is a former ace starter, throwing ace stuff, who’s recently generated ace results. The Astros figure he’s back, and, if he is, how many starters would you rather have leading a club into the playoffs? To say nothing of his two more years of control, during which the Astros should still be strong.

With Verlander and Justin Upton going out the door, this has been an important day for Detroit. And with Verlander landing in Houston, this has been an important day for the rest of the American League. The Astros were already very good. Now they’ve made about the biggest splash they could make.

Two things are simultaneously true about the American League wild-card race. One, none of the teams, outside of the Yankees, are particularly good. Even the Yankees have their own flaws, but the rest of the teams in the mix are even weaker. One could argue whether any of them will deserve to be playoff teams at all. Two, there will be playoff teams. There will be, probably, the Yankees and someone else. No matter what you might think about team quality, playoff positions are at stake, and a playoff spot, for any club, holds considerable value. We don’t actually know how the playoffs will ever go. The biggest thing is just making it there. Plenty of AL teams are trying to make it there.

It’s with this year’s playoff race in mind that we’ve got the following trade:

Angels get

• Justin Upton
• moderate 2017 salary relief

Tigers get

• Grayson Long
• a player to be named later

The Angels are not a good baseball team, relative to other baseball teams. However, they don’t need to be good — rather, they just need to be good enough. Upton could well make them good enough, and because this trade was made official today, Upton, of course, would be eligible for the playoff roster. Upton’s contract does have another four years, but this trade is very much about today, tomorrow, and the weeks a little after that.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

8/28

Tom de Blok, RHP, Detroit (Profile)
Level: Low-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: NR  Top 100: NR
Line: 7 IP, 2 H, 1 BB, 0 R, 8 K

Notes
de Blok has been one of the more interesting stories in minor-league baseball this year. He was signed out of the Netherlands by Seattle in August of 2013, but he didn’t enjoy his time training in Arizona, some of his things were stolen, and de Blok retired during extended spring training the following year.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Michael Hermosillo, OF, Los Angeles AL (Profile)
Level: Triple-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 14  Top 100: NR
Line: 3-for-4, 2 HR, BB

Notes
Hermosillo, a 28th rounder in 2013, was a two-sport high schooler committed to play football at Illinois, but he was coaxed into pro ball by a $100,000 signing bonus. He opened up his stance a bit last year and hit fairly well during an injury-shortened regular season before heading to the Arizona Fall League, where his physical tools measured up nicely compared to some of baseball’s better prospects.

This year, Hermosillo’s in-box footwork has again been tweaked, and he’s deploying a slower, more committed leg kick. Hitters who have deployed a leg kick like this in recent years have noted that it not only unlocks more pull-side power but also improves their timing. This is what seems to have happened for Hermosillo, who’s now more consistent and comfortable in the batter’s box than he was last season. He’s patient, athletic, and might do enough offensive damage to project in more than just a bench outfield role if these changes have truly unlocked previously dormant physical ability.

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Mikie Mahtook is healthy and riding his old swing to a resurgent campaign with the Detroit Tigers. Acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays in January for a PTBNL (Drew Smith), the 27-year-old outfielder is slashing a robust .288/.338/.464, with nine home runs in just 267 at-bats. Following a sluggish start that included limited playing time, he’s emerged as one of the few bright spots on what has turned into a moribund Motown ball club.

Last year was tough sledding for the Louisiana State University product. Coming off an impressive 41-game cameo with the club that drafted him 31st overall in 2011, he logged a .525 OPS over 196 plate appearance. Physical issues played a role — oblique and hand injuries were the primary bugaboos — but thanks to an offseason of healing and hard work, Mahtook is once again at full strength.

The change of scenery isn’t hurting. The Tigers are in team in transition, which means Mahtook is getting an opportunity to show what he can do. His body is giving him that opportunity, as well. Mahtook talked about his 2016 maladies, and the return of his swing, in the middle of this month.

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Mikie Mahtook: “I’m healthy. Last year I wasn’t. I hurt my oblique at the beginning of the season and it really affected my swing, which in turn affected my approach at the plate. Instead of being linear and allowing the ball to travel — staying extended and getting through the ball — I was basically cheating toward it to mask the pain in my oblique. I was going forward and everything was rotating toward left field.

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