DETROIT – Justin Verlander’s return to the mound at Comerica Park is on hold again. The Tigers' right-hander, who had been slated to return from the injured list and start Sunday against the White Sox, has been scratched with a left hamstring strain suffered during his bullpen session Wednesday in Houston.
It’s the latest setback for the 43-year-old hurler, whose reunion with his original team has been limited to one outing March 30 at Arizona. He has been on the injured list since then with left hip inflammation but was on the verge of a return.
The latest injury is expected to keep him out for weeks rather than days, manager A.J. Hinch said.
“My hip actually feels fairly good,” Verlander said. “All of a sudden, my hamstring was bugging me and I had to cut my bullpen short. Anytime I’m not able to get my work in, it means something’s definitely off, so we decided to get it looked at, and there’s a strain.
“Just really unfortunate, man. It just sucks. I don’t know how else to say it.”
What was expected to be an emotional return for Verlander to Detroit when the Tigers signed him to a one-year contract in February has instead become a microcosm of the Tigers’ injury-plagued season. Verlander was already frustrated by the slow pace of his recovery from the hip issue, which included larger-scale work on his mechanics to address some delivery issues that lingered through Spring Training.
Verlander had a series of simulated games against hitters, then made two rehab starts for Triple-A Toledo, followed by another sim game Monday in Houston. The results were mixed, including four solo homers in his second rehab start for the Mud Hens, but as Verlander said last weekend in Cleveland, “It’s time to go pitch.”
Now, that time is delayed again.
“This is kind of the first time anything like this has happened to me, where it’s consecutive injuries,” Verlander said. “I think this whole process has been agonizingly long for me, especially considering where we were at early on and thinking it was going to be a really short-term injury, to having to shift my mindset to more long term. We’re two-plus months later, that close to getting back out there, and then something else happens. Yeah, disappointing to say the least, but I think as a professional athlete who’s 43 years old, you kind of just take things as they come. It does no good for anybody to sit here and dwell on it, woe is me. Just have to deal with it like anything else.
“Things don’t always go the way you envision, and this certainly wasn’t. Now I deal with it, and hopefully this is it.”
By that last part, he hopes this is it for the injuries. He’s not thinking this is it for trying to pitch, not at this point in the season.
“At this point, I’m in the middle of a season. You guys have known me long enough,” he said. “There’s no giving up. This is halfway through a season that I committed to the Tigers for. Nobody envisioned it going this way, but I also intend on trying to give it my everything until the season’s over.
“Once that happens, I don’t know, man. It’s a different conversation now than it was last year when I seemed to be really healthy, a lot of thoughts that I’m going to have to take into consideration. My family is up here with me now. My son is turning 1 today, my daughter is 7. There’s a lot of things that are also going on in my life that are a draw away from the game. But I’ve always said I want to play until the wheels fall off. I don’t know, maybe they are falling off. I hope not.”