Detroit — It’s funny how baseball works.
That was Justin Verlander’s response earlier this week when asked about his latest return trip to Comerica Park. And that’s exactly how his first start for the New York Mets played out on Thursday afternoon, as Verlander’s former team got the last laugh in a 2-0 win to complete a rare Tigers sweep at Comerica Park.
Verlander, the 40-year-old marvel coming off his third Cy Young Award, was making his regular-season debut in a Mets uniform after spend the last month on the injured list with a strained muscle in his throwing shoulder. He was making just his third start ever as a visitor in Detroit following that 2017 trade that sent him to Houston, where he won two World Series rings, and officially ushered in a dreary rebuilding era for the Tigers.
So when he came striding out of the dugout on the first-base line and took the mound to warm up in the middle of the first inning Thursday, virtually the entire crowd of 18,369 rose to its feet. And while some of those were Mets fans — a handful sporting No. 35 Mets jerseys, in fact — most of them were Detroit fans saluting their former ace, who laid the foundation of his Hall of Fame-worthy career here, winning 183 games along with Rookie of the Year, Cy Young and league MVP honors wearing the Olde English ‘D’.
Verlander tipped his cap and waved briefly to acknowledge the ovation
“It meant a lot,” he said afterward, standing in the corner of a quiet visitors’ clubhouse, before exiting to meet his wife, Kate Upton, and their 4-year-old daughter Genevieve waiting for him in the hallway. “You know, I grew up here. I was here for 12-plus years. Drafted here and obviously spent a lot of fun years here. And I think any athlete in any situation, when they gave that much to an organization and that much of their career somewhere, it’s nice to hear the ovation and hear the applause. I mean, that’s a fan’s way of saying thank you.”
Of course, Verlander’s former team was ready with a different greeting. They ambushed him, basically, much like they’d done to another ex-Tiger, Max Scherzer, in Wednesday night’s 8-1 rout of the scuffling Mets and their $350 million payroll.
As Tigers manager AJ Hinch said, “We had to come out and beat Verlander at the beginning of the game.”
And that’s exactly what they did, Riley Greene and Javy Báez drilled back-to-back homers to stake the Tigers to a 2-0 lead before Verlander had even thrown 10 pitches.
“I really wouldn’t take those pitches back — I threw ’em where I wanted,” said Verlander, who’d only allowed a dozen homers in 28 starts last season as he helped lead the Astros to another title. “Just one of those days. It’s disappointing. Obviously not the first inning I would’ve wanted. But happy I was able to start to find my groove a little bit after that.”
He did, as he often does — and as his fans in Detroit certainly remember — settling down after a rough first inning that saw five of the first six Tigers hit balls with exit velocities above 100 mph. Greene’s line-drive rocket on a hanging curveball left the ballpark at 106.8 mph, while Baez’s opposite-field shot registered 103.4 mph.
But Verlander only allowed three hits and a walk after that, finishing with five strikeouts in his five innings of work. He ramped up his velocity after that first inning, too, topping out at nearly 97 mph when he faced Greene a third time and finally induced a groundout — Greene had reached on a bunt single in his second at-bat — in the bottom of the fifth. Verlander, who’d made only one rehab start last week in Double-A, was on a pitch count Thursday, and when he ended the fifth with 79 pitches, manager Buck Showalter told him his day was done.
“Pitchers that are really good … early on is usually the time you need to do something (against) them,” Showalter said. “I think you saw his stuff and velocity and crispness kind of get better as the game went on. I could tell he was getting after that last inning a little bit. So I think that bodes well. And the good thing is he felt good physically. That was the highlight of the day.”
For the Tigers, it was that Eduardo Rodriguez continues to pitch like an ace himself, lowering his ERA to 1.81 with another brutally efficient eight-inning outing. He allowed just two hits, walked one and finished with nine strikeouts as the Tigers earned their first series sweep of the season.
They’ll hit the road now to face another struggling National League team in St. Louis, buoyed by this impressive 26-hour stretch that saw them win three games, including two against a pitching tandem whose combined salary ($86.7 million) is more than the entire Tigers active payroll minus Miguel Cabrera.
On that last note, by the way, Verlander was asked if he’d missed getting one final chance to face his old Triple Crown-winning teammate, who missed the Mets series due to illness.
“Nah, I’m good.,” he said, smiling as he added, “I don’t need to face Miggy. It’s probably better that we didn’t.”
For the Tigers, this couldn’t have worked out any better, though, after rain washed out Tuesday’s series opener and forced Wednesday’s day-night doubleheader followed by Thursday’s getaway game.
“I think the wins are way more important than who you do it against,” Hinch said. “I mean, it is nice to defend the home field against two premier pitchers. But we can’t get too caught up in that.”
Nor will Verlander in this result, which was the Mets’ ninth loss in 11 games.
“I think we need to just kind of find our identity,” he said. “This series was difficult. We had a couple of games where we battled like hell at the plate and came back and kind of got our hearts broken at the end of the game. And then the opposite happened today, where we gave up a couple early and then we weren’t able to fight back offensively.
“Obviously, you don’t like to lose like that. But it happens. I mean, that’s a Major League baseball team. Just because they haven’t had a hot start to the season doesn’t mean they’re not good. And, I mean, Rodriguez has been pitching well all season long. So I don’t think it’s something to panic about.”
No, but it is kind of funny how this week turned out, just the same.
john.niyo@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @JohnNiyo