by
Justin Verlander
The Detroit Tigers keep on rolling, and Justin Verlander continues to watch.
The one-time ace of the staff -- and league, for that matter -- has not yet pitched in the 2015 season while nursing a strained triceps in his right arm.
The question becomes: do the Tigers really need him back at all?
Of course it is still very early in the season, just 13 contests in on a never-ending 162-game journey. But to this point, the starting pitching has been practically flawless, and Verlander’s absence has largely gone unnoticed.
David Price is now the unquestioned leader of the rotation. He’s started three games, all of them Tigers wins, while allowing just one earned run along the way.
Ditto for the newly-acquired Shane Greene: three starts, three Detroit victories, just a measly earned run permitted. The combined ERA for Price (0.40) and Greene (0.39) doesn’t even begin to approach that of a more human major league pitcher. You need not be Bill James to know that such numbers are very, very good.
(It’s worth noting that the top two pitchers, ERA-wise, in the National League, are currently Doug Fister and Max Scherzer. Truly amazing the amount of dominant starting pitching the Tigers have housed in the last several years.)
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The staff’s third best hurler in 2015, Alfredo Simon, looks oddly pedestrian next to Price and Greene. After all, his ERA is a whopping 1.74. Simon, or “Big Pasta” as he’s come to be known, has been nearly unhittable. He’s a perfect 3 and 0 and has refused to issue a single free pass in his last two starts. The 6-foot-6, almost 270-pound Simon did tail off in the second half last year, but for now, the big fella looks like a Dominican Roger Clemens.
Once Anibal Sanchez finds his rhythm and gets back to mowing hitters down, as he’s likely to do, this rotation will appear downright scary.
And again, you wonder, “How relevant is the eventual return of Justin Verlander?”
It’s not a knock on the guy -- just a simple fact that he is now an older pitcher (strange as that might seem) coming off two very ordinary seasons. Verlander is 32, entering his 10th full season as a big-leaguer. Power pitchers might start to lose a couple clicks on the heater around that age, and this has indeed been the case for JV. When 98-100 mph suddenly became 91-93, balls started flying all over the yard and strikeout numbers began to dwindle.
Much was made of Verlander’s intense training in the off-season, a renewed desire to find that MVP/Cy Young form of 2011 again. But those stories rarely go according to plan.
I can recall dozens of stories over the years of fading veterans putting on however many pounds of muscle, cutting their overall body fat percentage by X amount, leading us to believe that a return to excellence is just around the corner. But it’s mostly just white noise.
The truth lies in the numbers themselves. The statistics have been trending south for Verlander steadily since the MVP campaign, and in this non-steroid era of baseball, players don’t simply reemerge as dominant forces again in their mid-to-late 30s.
Of course, Verlander can still shake off the pains and strains, get back to being a productive Detroit Tiger in 2015. His career is by no means over, and even his more human work over the last few years would still qualify as a smashing success for many lesser-lights of the league.
Not Holding Their Breath
But with Price now the top dog, Greene matching him step for step, and Simon quietly doing the same, the Tigers are no longer holding their breath for a Verlander return.
There was a time when this franchise was defined by its solid-brick core of starting pitchers: Verlander, Scherzer, Fister, Porcello. But in professional sports, a couple of years can mean a tidal wave of change.
That reliance on starting pitching is still there, and the performance is every bit the same, but the names have changed considerably.
Verlander was part of the old regime, and one day soon, will join the ranks of the new. But his role will be far different.
He won’t be the ace, the leader, the guy you send to the mound to stop a four-game losing streak.
He won’t be an afterthought, either. He’ll still matter, just on a much smaller scale.
The hope is that Verlander gets to be at or near 100%, his velocity ticks back up, and he can plug in to this already-humming rotation.
However, if it doesn’t happen, it won’t be the end of the world. There was a time when it might have been. But not now.
JV’s return will be met with polite applause and open arms.
But in 2015, those arms have already proven to be more than capable of doing the heavy lifting all by themselves.
