Houston — You can tell he just doesn’t quite trust it yet.
“One start at a time,” he said. “This game will bring you down in a hurry. You can’t be complacent.”
Justin Verlander, 39 — and two years removed from his last full season — made his fifth start with his surgically-repaired right elbow Wednesday afternoon and, to all eyes but his own, it was a beauty.
Not necessarily the vintage display of power pitching like Tigers fans got to revel in for 13 years. It was, not to make it a theme, more surgical, clinical. His velocity was down a tick, sitting just under 94 mph and hitting 95 a few times. The spin rates on his slider (200 rpm) and curveball (nearly 300 rpm) were down from his last healthy season in 2019.
But he hit spots and mixed his pitches expertly and picked apart Seattle Mariners hitters racking up quick outs (nine in three pitches or less) and soft contact. He made essentially one mistake — a hanging slider that another former, Tiger Eugenio Suarez, hit up on the train tracks at Minute Maid Park — in 6.2 innings.
And, true to form, he was far from satisfied.
“Here we are, 19-ish months removed from surgery, and I’m still grinding,” he said. “I still call this rehab, but in a real-world application.”
What most pitchers wouldn’t give for these rehab results: Verlander is 3-1 with a 1.93 ERA and Major League-low 0.704 WHIP. Hitters are 5-for-42 against his four-seamer, which is averaging 94.7 mph on the season. They are 8-for-36 against his slider and 1- for-9 against his curve.
Command of the strike zone is, for most mortals, the last thing that comes after Tommy John surgery. After walking three in his first start, Verlander has walked one over his last four. Impressive.
“He can pitch,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said. “It doesn’t really surprise me because of the way he works. The guy is a worker. He stays in great shape and he’s as mentally strong as anybody I’ve ever had on my team. That’s why they hurried up and signed him. They knew the character he possesses and the strength he brings to this team.”
A quick aside: The Astros and Verlander agreed to a one-year, $25 million deal before the lockout and he signed it after. There was some buzz in Detroit about a reunion, but that was never going to happen. Verlander made two things clear last winter: He was willing to bet on himself and take a one-year deal, and at this stage of his career, only legitimate contenders need apply. The Tigers never reached out.
Verlander was at 80 pitches after six innings Wednesday and with two left-handed hitters due up for the Mariners in the seventh, Baker had a left-handed reliever hot and ready to go. Except Verlander wasn’t ready to come out. The goal was to get to 100 pitches.
“That was a big deal,” he said. “It’s something we’ve been trying to work on, building up smartly.”
The Astros have gone to a six-man rotation, which Verlander understands but doesn’t necessarily love.
“The next big hurdle is seeing how I respond from this,” he said. “You never know what’s going to happen. One of the things I’ve talked to the doctors and physical therapists about, there are peaks and valleys in this rehab even after you’ve come back. It’s not done yet.
“I’m interested to see how I respond tomorrow. Then, the next thing to check off is working in a regular five-day routine, which is something I would like to be able to do. But I think as an organization and as a staff, we’re being really smart on how we get there and try not to hit the accelerator too fast.”
Verlander, who still has his fleet of exotic sports cars, likened the entire rehab process to breaking in a new car. You need to ease it in for a few miles before you take it on the highway and turn it loose.
“I’m somebody who typically doesn’t get very sore and I’ve had starts where I’m more sore than normal,” he said. “The doctors say that’s normal and to be expected. But it’s something I need to learn how to manage. Slowly build up, slowly build up and the next thing you know, you are over the hump.”
He expects to be super sore Thursday after throwing 101 pitches. He wonders how quickly his arm will recover. Will there be residual effects going into his next start? Was the slight dip in velocity and were the slower spin rates the result of hitting a natural fatigue point? How many more barriers will he have to break through?
Post-surgical anxiety lasts longer than the arm’s actual healing time, even for future Hall-of-Famers.
“It’s intriguing to me how some little things have changed,” Verlander said. “I’m not exactly the same as I was.”
Unlike younger, less-established pitchers coming back from Tommy John surgery, though, Verlander has 17 years, more than 3,000 innings, 30 playoff starts, an MVP and two Cy Young Awards to lean on.
“This is where having all that time under my belt pitching at this level pays off,” he said. “I’m able to go with my instincts and not just be one-dimensional. I can read swings. I can read hitters. I can try to do the little things that make a difference.
“If your stuff isn’t all there on given day, I’m able to work with it because of the vast knowledge I’ve built pitching so long.”
Verlander still keeps tabs on the Tigers. He laughed when it was jokingly suggested that he keeps ducking them — having not pitched against them since 2019.
“Maybe I will see them in September at Comerica,” he said, referencing the Astros three-game series in Detroit Sept. 12-14.
He also sent out a video congratulating Miguel Cabrera on his 3,000th hit. In fact, he watched Cabrera punch that historic single to right field from the Astros clubhouse.
“Dusty (Baker) was there, too, and I asked him, ‘What are the biggest milestones you’ve seen?’” said Verlander, who helped Baker celebrate his 2,000th managerial win on Tuesday. “He goes, ‘Well, I saw Hank Aaron break Babe Ruth’s (home run) record. And I saw Barry Bonds break Hank Aaron’s record.’
“It’s just amazing some of the stuff he’s seen in the game.”
It’s amazing, too, how Verlander’s competitive fire still burns — even in a relatively blasé Wednesday matinee in early May. He thought he’d punched out Mariners shortstop and left-handed-hitting J.P. Crawford to lead off the seventh. He threw him a nasty 2-2 slider on the inside part of the plate.
Home plate umpire Stu Scheurwater didn’t give him the call, and when Crawford laced the next pitch, a 95-mph fastball, for a base hit, Verlander barked at Scheurwater. So much so that Scheurwater took off his mask and barked back.
A couple of hitters later, after Suarez hit the two-run homer and Baker came out to make a pitching change, Verlander, amidst a standing ovation, glared at the home plate ump on his way to the dugout.
“Overall, the results were good,” Verlander said. “Gave up the two-run homer. That kinda irks me. Like I said, it’s better to get off to a good start than a bad one. But, just have to keep working. I don’t feel like I’m there yet.”
Twitter@cmccosky