Twenty Years Later

 

Here are some fun facts about the 2005 Tigers, the team Justin Verlander debuted playing for in July of 2005: they were starting Chris Shelton at 1st base in the midst of his mid-2005 swoon; Magglio Ordonez was only hitting .082, having missed most of the spring with an injury; the team's best statistical player was Placido Polanco, with a 4.3 WAR; the team's manager was Alan Trammell, whose sacking would pave the way for Jim Leyland literally a year later; no starting pitcher had an ERA lower than 4.50, yet despite that four starters had over 175 innings; and they were platooning Nook Logan in center with a young hitter named Curtis Granderson. It was an interesting team to come up with, that's for sure.

And now Justin Verlander is an integral part of this 2025 Giants team, a team managed by Bob Melvin, who in 2005 was in his first year with the Diamondbacks, presided over by Buster Posey, who was still in high school in 2005, and alongside Hayden Birdsong, who is 19 years his junior. It's gotta be odd for him.

In all actuality, JV doesn't have much left to prove. He's already a Hall of Famer, he's already married to Kate Upton, already has 3 Cy Youngs and 2 World Series rings. He's done well for himself. But this Giants season seems to be JV trying to wrap things up on his own terms rather than fizzling out after an injury-shortened year last year. This is a dignified exit, says he. And you've seen moments of greatness in the midst of some lesser numbers from Verlander in San Francisco. His last two starts he's allowed 0 runs and only 3 hits. Against the Rays in August he went 7 strong with only 2 hits allowed and 8 Ks. Now, tellingly, some of Verlander's stronger starts are against middle of the road teams, but he's still got the ability to do this. His ERA was way higher before the ASG break, and he's gotten it down to 4.09, with 120 Ks to boot, but by and large the guy feels like a 42 year old. Which is fine, at the very least he's 42-year-old Justin Verlander and not 42-year-old Mike Maroth, but you can tell everyone involved wishes things were a little different.

Verlander is one of the last lines of defense for a Giants team that's spontaneously gotten very hot lately, on the strength of Rafael Devers, Matt Chapman and Dominic Smith. There are gaping flaws in this team that make me feel sort of confident that they won't make the leap to full-on Wild Card threats, but there's this narrow margin of possibility that they're hanging onto. They're gonna have to play the Dodgers later this week, and that'll cement whether or not anything's happening, but the fact that it's still possible after a midyear drop-off that could kill any other team does, at the very least, make me more confident than I'd thought. 

You never know. If you're in a 'losing games' contest with the Mets and the Reds, you've still got the odds on your side automatically.

Coming Tonight: From the moment he bailed on the Yankees to stay in Florida during a playoff race, I knew something like this would be coming from him. The villain arc. Sure enough it's here, in epic fashion.