Elle's Baseball Musings: Justin Verlander Went Five and a Third, Twice
By Elle Elena ·
Justin Verlander's big league career began on July 4, 2005, at Jacobs Field in Cleveland. It ended Saturday afternoon at Comerica Park in Detroit. I put the two box scores side by side, and the innings column stopped me. Both of them say 5.1.
Twenty-one seasons, 557 regular-season starts, and his first and last outings both lasted exactly 16 outs. Baseball is weird. I love it. So here is his finale, lined up next to his debut.
First innings. In 2005, Cleveland scored three runs off him in the first. On Saturday, his teammates stayed in the dugout so he could take the field alone, and he said afterward that he ran out before realizing nobody was with him. Then his first pitch, a 92 mph fastball, was fouled off by Ryan O'Hearn, and he needed 13 pitches for a 1-2-3 inning.
Settling in. The 22-year-old version retired 12 of the next 13 hitters after that rough first. The 43-year-old version, making only his second start of the year after hip and hamstring injuries, was reaching back by the third. He blew a 95 mph fastball past Henry Davis and got O'Hearn on a 94. I looked at those radar readings more than once.
The kid in the box. Pittsburgh's No. 5 hitter, Konnor Griffin, was born April 24, 2006, more than nine months after Verlander's debut. Griffin singled in his first at-bat. Then Dillon Dingler threw him out trying to steal second, which was my favorite play of the day that did not involve a hug. I watch catchers almost as much as pitchers, and a throw like that will always stop me mid-sentence.
The damage. The debut line was seven hits, four runs, three walks and four strikeouts in a 6-0 loss. Saturday's line was five hits, two runs, one walk and six strikeouts. Both runs came on solo homers, Brandon Lowe on the first pitch of the fourth and another in the fifth. The fifth nearly got messier after back-to-back singles, until Zach McKinstry fielded one in right, spun and threw Davis out at third to end the inning.
Pitch counts. 95 in Cleveland. 91 in Detroit. Twenty-one years later, he covered the same 16 outs with four fewer pitches.
The exit. He opened the sixth by getting Lowe to pop out to Dingler in foul territory. Then A.J. Hinch walked out of the dugout, and Verlander's 7-year-old daughter, Genevieve, ran to the mound in a Tigers jersey with his name and No. 35 on it. Hinch had planned it with Verlander's wife, Kate Upton. "That completely blindsided me, and it hit me like a ton of bricks," Verlander said. He walked off holding Genevieve's hand while the crowd gave him a standing ovation. Tyler Kinley threw the next pitch five and a half minutes later.
Decisions. The debut went down as a loss. The finale went down as a no-decision, and that took until the ninth. Detroit trailed 3-1, scratched one run across, and then rookie Eduardo Valencia fell behind Mason Montgomery 0-2 before hitting a curveball out to left-center for a two-run walk-off homer. Tigers 4, Pirates 3. "There was no way Justin Verlander was going to take the loss in his last game as a Tiger," Hinch said.
In between. Those two 5.1s bracket a 266-159 record, a 3.33 ERA, 3,560 strikeouts (eighth all-time), the 2006 Rookie of the Year, the 2011 AL MVP, three Cy Young Awards, three no-hitters and two World Series titles with Houston. That is a lot of career to fit between two matching innings totals.
One more bookend. Home plate umpire Laz Díaz first worked one of Verlander's games in 2006, and he is retiring after this season too. The two of them shared a few words after that 1-2-3 first.
"All the ovations today brought back a lot of fond memories of the old days here," Verlander said. "My body, though, didn't remind me of those days at all."
Fair enough. The box scores remember for him. 5.1 at the start, 5.1 at the finish.
-Elle