The details have come together for Pitch Talks San Francisco this September 18th at The Independent, and it’s shaping up to be a fantastic event. Come see us at 8pm (doors at 7:30) and enjoy live commentary and interaction in a great venue.

We’ve got Giants General Manager Bobby Evans coming for a question and answer session with the crowd, directed by Giants Outsiders host Therese Viñal. That panel has been a highlight in the past and should deliver on its promise again. His take on a team at the crossroads should be very interesting.

The Giants panel is going to be simple, in an effort to let three stars shine. Viñal will return and grab a gab with Hank Schulman and Grant Brisbee, two strong voices in Giants coverage that have their own unique spin on things.

Finally, we’ve added a new sort of panel to the event this year in an effort to place baseball coverage and fandom in the larger context of popular sport in America. The Future of Sport panel will bring together Danny Leroux, an NBA salary cap expert that writes at The Athletic, John Middlekauff, a former NFL scout that does local radio and also pushes the pen at The Athletic, and also Jen Mac Ramos, who was most recently an Assistant General Manager for the independent league Sonoma Stompers.

I’ll make the trio into a quartet, and we’ll talk about the future of all sports, as predicted by media, cultural, and even medical trends. This panel should be a great way to help the Bay Area transition into a fall that won’t feature postseason baseball for once.

The season is winding down, and a turn to the future — whether it’s the Giants or all sports — should be just the ticket.

Speaking of tickets, get yours here. The event is 21+, and FanGraphs readers are welcome to come early for a meetup at 7:30pm. Tickets from the earlier, postponed Pitch Talks will be honored.

See you there!

Position: Houston Astros Amateur Scouting Analyst

Location: Houston

Description:
The Houston Astros are currently seeking an Amateur Scouting Analyst in the Player Acquisition Department. This newly-created position will support the efforts of the domestic and international scouting departments by providing comprehensive evaluation of players based on numerous information streams. The Analyst will also work closely with the Research & Development department. This position will be in Houston, Texas.
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Position: San Francisco Giants Baseball Operations Analyst

Location: San Francisco

Description:
The San Francisco Giants are seeking an Analyst to join the Baseball Operations department. This individual will be part of the analytics team and provide research and analysis to support front office, player development, and scouting staffs. This position will also work closely with the application development team to design and develop statistical models and tools using advanced data sources within new and existing applications. The ideal candidate will possess strong analytical skills, the ability to communicate effectively to non-technical people, and both passion and intellectual curiosity for the game of baseball.
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In something of a surprise move, the Washington Nationals have called up 20-year-old center fielder Victor Robles from Double-A. Robles spent most of the season at the High-A level, having only played at Double-A since late July. Robles lacks experience against big-league-caliber pitching, but met basically every challenge at the lower levels this year, hitting an outstanding .300/.382/.493 with 27 steals. You’d be hard-pressed to find many batting lines better and more well rounded than Robles’. He hits for average, hits for power, and is a weapon on the bases. Oh, and he’s also an elite center fielder who was worth 15 runs above average this year according to Clay Davenport’s numbers.

If you’re looking for any signs of weakness with Robles, his plate discipline is a candidate. He struck out in 17% of his plate appearances in the minors and walked in 7%, which are both league-average-ish marks. Granted, there’s nothing wrong with average strikeout and walk numbers, particularly when everything else is off the charts. But keep in mind that those figures were recorded mostly against A-ball pitching and are likely to worsen against big leaguers.

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Although St. Louis’s 67-66 record puts them 5.0 games out of a Wild Card berth, our projections continue to give them a still-realistic 13.0% chance at cracking the playoffs due to the talent on their roster. Mike Leake wasn’t helping much, as the veteran righty had allowed at least four runs in each of his last four starts, yielding a protuberant 10.24 ERA. St. Louis had apparently seen enough, trading Leake to Seattle. In his place, they’ve called up top prospect Jack Flaherty to make his major-league debut tonight at San Francisco. Flaherty ranked No. 57 on Eric Longenhagen’s updated top-100 list.

Flaherty was nothing short of excellent in the minors this year, pitching to a stellar 2.18 ERA in 25 starts between Double-A and Triple-A. Most impressively, he struck out 25% of opposing batters while walking just 6%. If you’re looking for a nit to pick, it’s that Flaherty isn’t much of a ground-ball pitcher and, largely as a result, was a little homer-prone in his 15 Triple-A starts. But otherwise, his recent minor-league track record is impeccable.

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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.

The Cardinals traded Mike Leake to the Mariners today. That makes some sense, as Seattle needed a guy capable of throwing league-average innings more than St. Louis did. Most moves these days are like that, with sensible people making sensible moves that generally look fine. The days of regularly bewildering transactions in baseball are mostly over.

But they aren’t totally extinct. For instance, yesterday, we got this piece of news.

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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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Yesterday’s start didn’t work out particularly well for Rich Hill. In his first appearance since bringing a perfect game into the ninth inning and then losing a no-hitter (and the game) in the 10th, the Dodgers left-hander conceded a single to the first Diamondbacks hitter he faced on Tuesday. He also conceded hits to the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh batters he faced. By the time he’d recorded his third out in Arizona, he’d allowed five runs. His club’s win expectancy? Less than 13%.

Hill’s night wasn’t a complete shambles, however. Because, even en route to allowing six runs, he also did this:

What this is, is Rich Hill executing a nearly perfect drag bunt against Zack Godley and the rest of the Arizona infield in the the third inning. This is, of course, unusual — a fact which even the casual viewer might have gathered by the reaction of Dodgers first-base coach George Lombard.

While it’s not uncommon for pitchers to bunt — nearly a quarter of their balls in play as batters are bunts, noted Eli Ben-Porat yesterday for the Hardball Times — almost all of those are sacrifice attempts. Of the 539 successful bunts recorded by pitchers this year, only 45 (or, 8.3%) have resulted in hits — and many of those batted balls ultimately classified as “bunt hits” are actually just sacrifice attempts with extenuating circumstances.

Consider the case of Cardinals righty Carlos Martinez. Martinez currently leads all pitchers with three bunt hits. As one can observe, however, he hasn’t really intended to reach base in any one of those instances.

Here’s one of those so-called “bunt hits,” from May 13th:

A second, from June 5th:

And the most recent one, from August 18th:

All three of Martinez’s bunt hints have actually been squeeze attempts in which the fielder has endeavored to record an out at home. In all three cases, the fielder has failed in that endeavor. As a result, a hit has been assessed — almost by default — to Martinez.

The only other pitcher with multiple bunt hits is Zach Davies. Both of them look very much like the sort for which Carlos Martinez is responsible.

Here’s the first one, from a July 25th game against the Nationals:

And from later that same game, on a play that very much resembles an error, but is apparently not an error.

Between Martinez and Davies, that’s five bunts scored as hits, but never intended to be hits — certainly not in the way Hill intended to bunt for a hit.

The difference, of course, is that Martinez and Davies were batting with men on base in every instance. Hill attempted his bunt with no one aboard. And this, for pitchers, is a much more rare event.

A data query by my colleague Jeff Zimmerman reveals that, including Hill’s attempt last night, pitchers have bunted with the bases empty on just 13 occasions this year. Along with Carlos Carrasco, Hill is the only pitcher credited with two bases-empty bunt attempts.

His first one, back on June 3rd, actually caused some trouble for the Milwaukee defense:

Notably, Dodgers pitchers account for five of the 13 bases-empty bunt attempts — and the only successful one before last night, executed by Julio Urias on May 9th.

Urias’s effort resembled Hill’s from last night:

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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