Justin Verlander didn’t try to hide from the results.
The latest loss, he said Friday, was “frankly embarrassing.”
The 42-year-old pitcher is not the same as the one who first appeared in MLB two decades ago, and his current performance does not reflect the high standards of his earlier years.
Following an outing where he allowed six earned runs in three innings during the Giants’ defeat to the A’s, Verlander’s ERA increased to 4.84 after 14 starts, and he remains winless this season, with a record of 0-6 despite his $15 million salary.
“I know that I can still succeed with the skills I possess at this level,” Verlander told reporters, as reported by the San Francisco Standard. “Currently, I lack the necessary deception, and I need to enhance how I blend my pitches. Mechanically, I am not delivering them in a way that effectively deceives hitters.”
The Giants have picked up just four wins during Verlander’s starts this year, and he won’t make an All-Star Game for a third consecutive season after earning appearances in nine of his first 17 years in the majors.
Verlander has recorded an out in the seventh inning just once this season, during a May 1 outing against the woeful Rockies.
“Guys are able to execute their game plan against me too easily,” Verlander told reporters, according to the Standard. “I can’t quite get fastballs by guys when I should be able to. I can’t quite get them to chase the good off-speed pitch. When I do throw a bad one, they’re on it.”
So he’ll keep working on mechanics, he said.
He remembered encountering stretches like this before, where he needed to “reinvent the wheel,” to “throw s–t against the wall and see what works.”
But this isn’t the Verlander who won World Series titles with the Astros in 2017 and 2022 — and who was a major part of their dynasty.
This isn’t the Verlander whom the Mets snagged in free agency ahead of the 2023 season to pair with Max Scherzer at the top of their rotation.
Verlander has become just another aging pitcher, mixing some decent starts with some ugly ones and not collecting the that — sometimes — help mask some of the underlying concerns.
He knows it’s something that needs to get fixed “quickly,” too.
