Houston Astros starting pitcher Justin Verlander (35) in action during a baseball game against the … [+] Washington Nationals, Friday, April 19, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass)
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
He doesn’t have to do one more thing on a baseball field to be one of the very greatest to pitch at the game’s highest level. Justin Verlander is a slam dunk Hall of Famer, with a 262-147, 3.30, career line, 3416 strikeouts and 82.0 fWAR. He’s won a pair of World Series rings with the Astros, and was the 2017 ALCS MVP.
The San Francisco Giants went hard after a couple of the biggest prizes on the free agent market this offseason, coming up short on both Blake Snell and Corbin Burnes. The arms race in the competitive NL West has gotten pretty heated, and the club needed to do something to stay within hailing distance of the Dodgers (Snell’s new home), Padres and Diamondbacks (Burnes’).
On the surface, this marriage between team and player, at the cost of $15 million for one year, might not seem to be a cost-effective one. Is it a case of a club simply doing something with its available funds after falling short on its primary targets?
Think about it for a second – $15 million doesn’t go as far as it used to on the free agent market. A league average starter – someone you might expect to contribute about 2.0 fWAR over a full season, is worth about that much, if not a little more.
So the question becomes, is Justin Verlander likely to be a league average starter in 2025? A cursory glance at this 2024 stat line might cause one to quickly respond in the negative. 5-6, 5.48, a 138 ERA- and 118 FIP-, with his lowest K rate (18.7%) since 2014? Nothing to see here.
A deeper dive into his 2024 numbers offers a bit more room for optimism, however. Verlander still does plenty of things well – and possibly does some of them better than he ever has.
First, the negatives. You can’t count on him for nearly the innings bulk he carried even a few years ago. 2021 Tommy John surgery and more minor 2024 shoulder and neck ailments have seen to that. The Astros got a mere 90 1/3 innings out of him last season. There’s also the aforementioned K rate drop. It’s never been all about fastball velocity for Verlander, but it is worth noting that his average 2024 four-seam velocity of 93.5 mph was his lowest since 2015. This is a guy who used to be able to dominate with his fastball, beyond his stable of imposing offspeed offerings.
Positives? They’re easier to find than you might think. Verlander was one of the unluckiest pitchers in the AL on batted balls last season. In fact, he was the unluckiest among pitchers with a better than league average “Tru” ERA- (my batted ball-based proxy for ERA-/FIP-).
His Adjusted Line Drive Contact Score of 99 was far better than his actual, unadjusted 124 mark. And his Adjusted Ground Ball Contact Score of 106 was dramatically better than his actual, unadjusted 232 mark. Hitters batted an obscene .328 AVG-.343 SLG on the ground against Verlander last season – there’s no reason for that other than dumb (bad) luck.
You might say, OK, but even though he was unlucky, he was below league average in both of those categories, and you’d be right. But did you know that Verlander was the best starter in the AL (tied with the Mariners’ Bryan Woo) at limiting fly ball authority, with a 70 Adjusted Fly Ball Contact Score? That’s a big deal, especially when you’re posting the 3rd highest fly ball rate (45.7%) among AL starters. Toss in a very high 6.6% pop up rate (over a full standard deviation above league average) and you have the very definition of a “fly ball guy”.
Put it all together and Verlander was an above average contact manager in 2024 (93 Adjusted Contact Score), and his “Tru”- of 96 was far better than either his ERA- or FIP-, making him a – yes – better than league average starter.
Do I expect Verlander to be as exceptional at throttling fly ball contact in 2025? Probably not, but I expect him to get off of the mat in the areas in which he struggled, and provide similar pitching quality. And I’d also place the odds at better than 50-50 that he’ll exceed his 2024 innings quantity. That makes him worth his contract right there.
And if he gets a little more oomph on his heater or refines any of his secondary pitches and pushes his K rate back up to the league average range, like where it was in 2023 (21.5%), than the Giants might really have something.
Honestly, there’s no such thing as a truly risky one-year deal, so the Giants just might have threaded the needle and attained a desirable risk-reward ratio even after whiffing on their preferred targets. The great ones tend to figure it out, and Justin Verlander is one of the greatest.
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source link
