Detroit — Don’t know if you were planning to come out to Comerica Park Sunday for the finale of the Tigers’ series with the Houston Astros, but you might want to think about it.
It will be your last opportunity to see a pair of future Hall-of-Famers square off against each other. Miguel Cabrera, who is in his final season, vs. Justin Verlander.
“We thought we were done with Justin when we played the Mets (in May) and here we are seeing him again,” Tigers manager AJ Hinch said with a smile. “I’ll counter with Miggy in lineup tomorrow. Give you a nice little Miggy/Verlander story.”
This has been one of the more insane seasons Verlander has had to deal with.
“It is a lot harder on the family side than it is on the baseball side,” he said, sitting in the corner of the cramped visitors clubhouse Saturday. “It’s been nice to come back in this locker room. I know these guys so well and they were excited to have me back. It felt easy.
“But from the family side, it’s more difficult. My daughter (5-year-old Genevieve) doesn’t quite understand it.”
She’s not alone.
It started with a lot of hoopla and fanfare. Verlander signed a two-year, $86 million contract, at age 40, with the Mets. Then he missed the first month of the season working through a shoulder strain.
By the time he got back up and running — and he staggered through his first nine starts, posting a 4.50 ERA — the Mets were imploding and owner Steve Cohen was off-loading expensive assets — namely a pair of former Tigers, Max Scherzer and Verlander.
“It was weird,” said Verlander, who has ended up back in another playoff chase with Houston. “I heard somebody say it’s like I had a summer abroad. It’s kind of what it feels like. I enjoyed my experience with the Mets. It’s just crazy how fast it happened.
“Nobody could’ve seen that happening.”
Verlander’s Mets debut was May 4 at Comerica Park. Riley Greene and Javier Báez took him deep in the first inning before he locked in and allowed just three more hits, singles, through five innings. He didn’t hit his stride until the end of June.
But he’s in it fully now. He’s 7-2 in his last 11 starts with 2.17 ERA, holding hitters to a .216 average and a .594 OPS. His last start against the Red Sox was one of his best of the season, when he struck nine over six scoreless innings.
“I feel like I’m on a good path,” Verlander said. “It’s always hard with an injury. I haven’t dealt with all that many, fortunately. But coming back mid-season from something is never easy. You have to give that its own time to work itself out mechanically. And then the results weren’t what I wanted, either.
“So I had to kind of go back to the drawing board.”
Imagine that. A three-time Cy Young winner, two-time World Series champion, having to get his butt back into the pitching lab and back into the bullpen and work through some mechanical issues. That is exactly what he did. He worked on the load portion of his delivery, getting his lower half in synch.
Once he did that, the sharpness came back on his breaking ball and the shape and velocity (95 mph in his last start) got back to where it’s always been.
“Every now and then you get these seasons where everything works out and you don’t need to tweak anything,” he said. “But most of the time in a normal season, you’re tweaking things along the way trying to find it. A season like this one, for a couple of months there, I was searching for it.
“That’s not the easiest thing to do, but I’d rather find it than not, right? I feel like I’ve been inching my way better and better and having better results. I need to keep going in the right direction.”
And here he is, for the fifth season since being traded away from the Tigers, smack dab in another playoff race.
“I think he’s getting rejuvenated being the race,” said Hinch, who managed Verlander from 2017-19 in Houston. “And being back in a familiar place with some familiar teammates. The spotlight is on him and he loves that. He usually rises to the occasion.
“Every five days is an event when he pitches.”
It will be no different Sunday.
“He’s one of the best pitchers of all time,” Hinch said. “And saying that about somebody who is still active is a high compliment. I think he’s earned that.”
X (formerly Twitter): @cmccosky