CINCINNATI — Wins matter to Justin Verlander, and we’re not talking just team wins.
Team wins should matter to every baseball player, and Verlander is no different. But in his mind, an ultimate win is the kind that’s credited to him. The kind that gets him a “W” next to his name in the box score. The kind that he earns after pitching deep into a game and giving his side a chance at victory.
It’s a generational thing. Young pitchers coming up through the ranks now are more concerned about other personal stats because they’ve been told wins largely are dependent on how the team performs overall.
To which Verlander would say hogwash.
The 42-year-old right-hander made his Giants debut Saturday afternoon at Great American Ball Park fully intending to beat the Reds and get credited with the win.
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That didn’t happen. The Giants lost 3-2. Verlander got a no-decision. His career win total remains 262, most among active pitchers and 41st all time. He’ll have plenty more opportunities this season to amp up his win total in his quest to join — and possibly become the final member of — the prestigious 300-win club.
It’s unfortunate, in retrospect. Verlander made the game winnable, carrying a 2-1 lead into the fifth inning and hoping to exit with a lead so the Giants could turn to their top leverage relievers and run their record to 2-0. However, Elly De La Cruz had a different plan. The phenomenally talented Reds shortstop hit a two-out, run-scoring single in the bottom of the fifth inning to pull the Reds into a 2-2 tie.
Verlander finished the inning and was pulled after 83 pitches, and the Reds decided it on Christian Encarnacion-Strand’s sixth-inning homer off Spencer Bivens.
“Our job is to win. I like winning,” Verlander said at his locker after the game. “I wasn’t able to do that today. If we were a couple of starts in, I’d probably have one more inning in there. My pitch count was in the mid-80s, and that was about the highest I had gone in the spring. We didn’t want a situation where I had to go 100-plus or get pulled in the middle of an inning and have to leave a big situation.
“Look,” continued Verlander, “we didn’t win the game. Ultimately, my guys gave me a 2-1 lead. I would’ve liked to hold that. I’m usually trying to take a pretty objective view of my performance, good or bad, and I think this was OK. It wasn’t great. It wasn’t bad. But it was definitely a step forward from last season, I can say that.”
Last season was a bummer for Verlander, thanks to a neck injury that shelved him and remained bothersome after he returned to the mound in the final weeks. His ERA was a whopping 5.48, so he changed his throwing approach and altered his mechanics in a bid to stay healthy this season and return to his old self.
So on that front, it was a good outing. Or, as Verlander called it, a “decent” outing. He hung a slider in the third inning, and Matt McLain crushed it over the left-field wall. McLain remained a pest in the fifth when he hit a two-out double to right-center and scored when De La Cruz grounded a low curve ball through the right side.
“Elly hit it in the right spot. That’s baseball,” Verlander said. “You can beat yourself up as a pitcher on many things, but if you make a pitch and the guy hits it hard in the right spot, you tip your cap and move on. He laid off a really good slider the pitch before that. That’s what the best players in the game do.”
For most of spring training, Verlander excelled at throwing first-pitch strikes, a key for the success of any pitcher. But Saturday, he threw just one first-pitch strike in the first two innings, through eight batters, though it should be noted home plate ump Cory Blaser had a tight strike zone.
Still, both innings were scoreless because of how Verlander battled back in the count. He struck out De La Cruz with a curve to end the first and blew a 95.7 mph fastball by Jake Fraley to end the second, one of his hardest pitches of the day. The longer Verlander threw, the more first-pitch strikes he threw.
Verlander’s pitch limit was set at 90, and it was clear he was done after the fifth when he was seen hugging his catcher, Patrick Bailey, and getting high-fives from teammates.
That manager Bob Melvin left him in the fifth to face the Reds’ lineup a third time wasn’t shocking if only because it was Verlander. For many pitchers under the previous Farhan Zaidi-Gabe Kapler regime, they’d get pulled before getting a third crack at the lineup, when the numbers show that batters perform better.
Verlander’s different, of course. He’s going to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot and deserves to pitch deep into games, which not only would improve the Giants’ chances of winning but improve his own chances to compile wins.
“I think Justin Verlander is a guy that still very much values wins and losses,” Melvin was saying before the game. “There are guys that go out there, kind of pitch to the score of the game. I think he’s one of those guys, when he takes the mound, the intent is to get a ‘W’ next to his name, where maybe nowadays guys don’t value that as much.”
Verlander joins an impressive list of future Hall of Famers who joined the Giants near the end of their careers: Warren Spahn, Steve Carlton, Rich Gossage, Randy Johnson, Duke Snider and Gary Carter. Others include Darryl Strawberry, Eric Davis, Dan Quisenberry, Joe Carter, Orel Hershiser, Don Larsen and even Deion Sanders.
Now along comes Verlander, who’s 42 and not only the oldest active player in the majors but the oldest in any of the four major American sports. He took the mound Saturday at 42 years and 37 days, the oldest Giant to start a game since Johnson on July 5, 2009 (45 years, 298 days).
In fact, Johnson won his 300th game as a Giant, the last man to reach the milestone, 24th in history, and Verlander wants to be next.
In the meantime, the Giants’ offense will need to chip in. Saturday, they struck out just once after whiffing 17 times in the opener. But the rallies were few and far between against Reds lefty Nick Lodolo and three relievers, and three double plays ruined any momentum.
Wilmer Flores’ second homer in two games gave the Giants a 1-0 lead, and Jung Hoo Lee’s RBI single made it 2-0. It was the Giants’ only hit with runners in scoring position, not nearly enough punch to take down the Reds or make a winner out of Verlander.