A Tigers Ace Is Still Durable if No Longer Dominant
When Brad Ausmus lines up his playoff rotation this October, he might feel like Jerry Seinfeld planning to pick up a friend for coffee. Take the Porsche or the Rolls-Royce? Maybe the Jaguar or the Lamborghini? There is no wrong choice.
The Detroit Tigers have used three Cy Young Award winners in the first four games of their series at Yankee Stadium this week. Max Scherzer pitched on Monday, then the newly acquired David Price, before Justin Verlander on Wednesday. Scherzer and Price are having much better seasons than Verlander. So are most pitchers.
No American Leaguer has allowed more earned runs than Verlander's 80 this season. Yet few, if any, can match his aura.
'I've caught Justin a lot,' catcher Alex Avila said, 'and I've told people over and over again: When it comes to one game, I'll take Justin over anybody.'
Clayton Kershaw, Felix Hernandez and Chris Sale, to name a few from other teams, might seem like better options. So might Scherzer and Price, or even two other Tigers: Rick Porcello, who is tied for the major league lead in wins, with 13, and Anibal Sanchez, last year's A.L. leader in earned run average.
Those pitchers, though, were not on the mound in Oakland for that decisive playoff shutout in 2012, or for the near-repeat performance last fall. Verlander was. It is a long season, of course, and Verlander is coming around. The Tigers will keep the faith as they wait.
'He's got plenty of stuff to get hitters out on an extremely consistent basis,' said Ausmus, the Tigers' manager, before the Yankees' 5-1 win. 'He's got four quality, major league, above-average pitches - fastball, curveball, slider and change. If he gets in a situation where he's throwing 94-95 and he's commanding those pitches and changing speeds with those pitches and locating, he's going to be extremely tough.'
Verlander did that against the Yankees, and he was as effective as Ausmus had promised. He threw fastballs with his first nine pitches, then kept the Yankees guessing with the assortment Ausmus highlighted. He retired his first 11 hitters and did not allow a run until Chase Headley homered off a changeup in the fifth.
A homer to right in the seventh by Brian McCann - off a 1-2 pitch at 91 miles an hour - gave the Yankees a 2-1 lead when Verlander walked off the mound after the inning, his night complete. He walked one and fanned five, allowing five hits and two runs.
Verlander entered the game with a 10-9 record, and even after Wednesday's strong outing, his 4.57 E.R.A. remained his highest since 2008. It is more than a run higher than his career mark coming into the season (3.41).
Verlander has retained his durability, ranking among the top 10 in the league in innings. But his dominance has largely escaped him. He gave up at least five earned runs in seven of his last 11 starts before the All-Star break.
Three times, Verlander has led the league in strikeouts, but his strikeout rate (6.6 per nine innings, coming into the game) was his lowest since 2006, when he was a rookie. His average fastball, according to Fangraphs, was 92.5 miles an hour, the lowest it has ever been. In 2011, when he won the A.L. Most Valuable Player award to go with his Cy Young, Verlander averaged 95 m.p.h. with his fastball.
'When somebody talks about velocity, to me that sounds ridiculous,' Avila said. 'Because when you watch him pitch, yeah, he's going to throw fastballs at 91 and 92, but he's also going to throw some at 96 and 97. So that has nothing to do with anything.'
Avila added: 'His range of velocity of his fastball is just so much greater than most pitchers. A lot of pitchers will be throwing 91, 92 the entire time. He's throwing from 90 to 97. That's a big difference.'
Verlander has long thrived by throwing harder as the game goes on, and by the fourth inning Wednesday he was touching 95 m.p.h. now and then. The Tigers believe he can still be overpowering without throwing his best fastballs as often as he used to.
'I've still seen him where he can dial it up to 96, 97,' said Dave Dombrowski, the Tigers' president and general manager. 'But when you watch Kershaw or King Felix, most of their pitches are 92 to 94. They're not all 98s and 99s, by any means. So you can pitch effectively like that, and that's what we think with him.'
Verlander hurt himself during his off-season conditioning program last December, and he had core muscle repair surgery on Jan. 9. He was ready for opening day - earning the start over Scherzer, the reigning A.L. Cy Young winner - but the injury at least altered his preparation. Ausmus said Verlander had been trying to find a consistent release point.
The results have been encouraging lately. Wednesday's performance was Verlander's fourth quality start in a row, and his E.R.A. in that stretch is 3.14.
At 31, Verlander is young enough to recapture his place among the elite, which is where the Tigers expect him to be. His contract increases to $28 million per year, for five years, starting in 2015.
'When we signed him, we're talking about one of the premier pitchers in baseball,' Dombrowski said. 'Knowing Justin Verlander, he is a very hard worker, he's very focused, he wants to be successful and he's not the kind of guy who's just going to rest on his laurels because of the contract. That's not how he's made.'
The Tigers trust in those intangibles. With more games like Wednesday's, Verlander will give them an even better reason to believe.
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