PHOENIX -- The look on the way into the ballpark was vintage Justin Verlander: Headphones on, mind focused, all business.
The look on the mound in the outing that followed was anything but vintage. Verlander whirled his body around and craned his neck to follow the path of Corbin Carroll’s three-run home run, then looked at the ground and shook his head. His slider, the one secondary pitch he seemed to be executing in the early innings, had deserted him at the worst possible time, with two outs and two on in the second inning, giving Arizona a five-run lead.
This was not how Verlander’s return to the Tigers was supposed to go. But reunions, no matter how perfect they might seem, don’t always follow the script.
When Verlander took the mound at Chase Field on Monday night, 3,135 days since his last regular-season start for Detroit on Aug. 30, 2017, he joined Don Sutton as the only pitchers in Major League history to make at least 380 starts with his original team, move on to make 175 starts elsewhere, then return to start again for his first club. Sutton, like Verlander, signed back with his original team at age 43, rejoining the Dodgers in 1988 after seven years elsewhere. Sutton made three starts in the Dodgers rotation before picking up his first win back with Los Angeles.
Monday was a reminder that getting Verlander back does not mean getting the 99 mph fastball, buckling curveball and nasty slider back from his prime. Verlander toiled through Spring Training working to get his arsenal in order, not just his fastball velocity but his overall crispness. He made progress, but still ended his spring looking for the adrenaline of regular-season competition to help him find the finishing touches.
From Verlander’s first pitch, however, Monday was a grind. Ketel Marte led off with a single through the middle, then Carroll worked a seven-pitch at-bat that included a wild pitch before crushing a 94 mph fastball off the right-field fence for an RBI triple. Carroll scored on a fielder’s choice but Verlander held it there, ending a 28-pitch opening inning.
Back-to-back one-out singles from the bottom of the order put Verlander back in danger in the second inning. Shortstop Javier Báez earned Verlander a badly-needed out with an over-the-shoulder catch of Marte’s fly ball in shallow left field, but Carroll caught a slider on the inside corner and sent it a Statcast-projected 403 feet to right field for a 5-0 Detroit deficit.
Carroll joined former Twins and Nationals speedster Denard Span as the only Major League players to triple and homer off Verlander in the same game. Span tormented the Tigers during his Minnesota years, but his game off Verlander came on Aug. 9, 2018, when Verlander was an Astro and Span was a Mariner.
Verlander found a bit of a rhythm after Carroll’s homer, retiring six of his next seven batters and stranding Gabriel Moreno in the third inning after a leadoff double. But Marte’s two-out walk in the fourth inning brought manager A.J. Hinch out of the dugout with the hook. There was no look of protest like from Verlander’s early years, just disappointment at a game that had gotten away.
Verlander finished with five runs on six hits over 3 2/3 innings, walking two. His third-inning strikeout of Alek Thomas was his only K of the game, and one of the few glimpses of his classic curveball. Verlander averaged 93.2 mph on his fastball, but drew 11 called strikes with it. Four of his six swinging strikes came on sliders.
Verlander prepared himself mentally in Spring Training for the possibility that his effort to find his better stuff, including velocity, could carry into the season. Even during some of his best years, he has spent past Aprils still building before putting it all together in May and rolling into the summer. His next start could be the biggest adrenaline boost he has felt in a regular-season game in years, returning to Comerica Park for a nationally-televised Sunday night clash against the Cardinals.