In 2023, Justin Verlander had a 3.22 ERA. In 2024, he had a 5.48 ERA. According to a proprietary stat I’ve invented called “One ERA minus another” (OEMA), that was a -2.26 difference, which is not the direction a pitcher wants to go. The difference is even more extreme when you compare last season to his award-winning 2022 season, but almost every season in baseball history looks bad in that comparison. Our primary concern, however, is what the Giants should expect from Verlander in 2025, so the changes from 2023 to 2024 are more informative.
So … what were the changes?
This is a baseball question, which means answers aren’t likely to be simple or obvious. There isn’t a switch on Verlander’s back that needs to be flipped. He was previously employed by the Houston Astros, a smart organization that hasn’t missed the postseason since 2016. They spent a lot of time pondering this question. It wasn’t a case of “he needs to throw his slider more/less” or “he wasn’t too old when he was 40, but 41 is when he got too old.” There isn’t a definitive answer at all, most likely. Just a couple of breadcrumbs that may or may not be the start of a trail.
It doesn’t hurt to round up some of the usual suspects, though. And it also won’t hurt to take a peek at that 2022 season to look for whatever changes might apply.
Was Verlander’s fastball the issue?
Velocity is the obvious place to start, especially when Verlander’s fastball was hit harder than ever last season. Here’s how hard he’s thrown over the last few seasons, with his 2019 velocity included to give you an idea of where he was before his Tommy John surgery.
Justin Verlander, average FB velocity
|
Year
|
Avg. FB velocity
|
|---|---|
|
2019 |
94.6 |
|
2022 |
95.0 |
|
2023 |
94.3 |
|
2024 |
93.5 |
Note that Verlander threw about 1,000 fewer fastballs last season than he did in either of the previous two. He threw enough to avoid us small-sample weaseling our way out of this, but it was still an incomplete season. Maybe with an extra couple of months, the fastball would have been trending in either direction by the end of the season.
Another consideration is that grouping this all by a calendar year gives the illusion of an unbroken linear trend. But Verlander’s average fastball velocities in September 2023 and April/May 2024 are mostly indistinguishable. There’s a slight dip begins right before his IL trip in 2024, though, that never quite recovers. Before his neck injury at the end of May, hitters batted .227 with a .454 slugging percentage against his fastball. After, they hit .382 with a .551 slugging percentage. It’s less “2023 vs. 2024” and more “before injury and after.”
Still, velocity is something to watch for every pitcher, and it’s even more relevant for a quadragenarian. In four different starts after he was hurt last season, Verlander’s average velocity dipped under 93 MPH, and those were among his worst starts. He hadn’t had any starts with an average fastball that low since May 2016. Every pitcher’s velocity has a tipping point where the fastball moves from helpful to harmful. If Verlander’s dip had more to do with age than injury, it’s unlikely to get better.
At the risk of spoilers, it sure is curious that things got worse after his neck injury. Sure is curious …
Or was it a problem with one of his offspeed pitches?
Swings and misses on Verlander’s slider, by year:
2019: 39.9 percent
2022: 34.6
2023: 29.3
2024: 21.5
Batters still didn’t like what happened when they swung at the slider — they hit just .195 against it last year — but it’s notable that they weren’t missing nearly as often. That’s a lot of at-bats that kept going.
Verlander’s curveball was getting swings and misses just as often as it was in his historic 2022 season, but it’s the pitch that was getting hit the hardest (.327 BA, .551 SLG) last year. It was one of his best pitches in 2023, and the characteristics of the pitch didn’t change much at all, according to the numbers. It spun just as much, was thrown just as hard, released from the same spot, moved the same way, et cetera. The average contact against his curve left the bat at 87 mph, which is the same as it was in his 2022 Cy Young season. He wasn’t missing with it up in the zone much, and if you want to compare the heat maps from each season like you’re at the optometrist’s office, you won’t find much difference. The outcomes were much worse, though.
Finally, Verlander’s changeup was roughly the same, with one exception: He was throwing it almost twice as much, up to 10 percent of the time. It’s probably safe to ignore it, though, as it’s clearly his fourth pitch and something he throws to prevent hitters from sitting on his other three pitches.
So that’s a slider that wasn’t missing bats as often and a curveball that was getting hit much harder. Seems like that would be enough for a jury to convict the offspeed pitches … except you can’t really untangle these pitches from his fastball. Instead of thinking of miles per hour, start thinking about milliseconds. Less velocity from the fastball gives the batter the gift of milliseconds, and the offspeed pitches might have suffered from that extra time.
Maybe there wasn’t actually a problem at all?
Verlander’s expected ERA, by season:
2023: 3.63
2024: 3.88
His expected slash line against, by season:
2023: .229/.284/.392
2024: .234/.337/.389
His Stuff+ numbers, a metric that Eno Sarris explains here:
|
Year
|
Stuff+
|
Location+
|
Pitching+
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
2022 |
135.0 |
107 |
113 |
|
2023 |
106.0 |
104 |
105 |
|
2024 |
117.0 |
101 |
103 |
And, of course, the batting average of balls in play against Verlander:
2023: .265
2024: .303
Everything is similar except for the BABIP, and while it wasn’t outrageously high, it was still above his normal levels. This is how a pitcher who was in the 92nd-percentile when it came to hard-hit balls allowed was hit so … hard. He might have been a touch unlucky in addition to everything else. That’s never a satisfying or convincing explanation, but there’s evidence for it and not much against it. He stranded far fewer runners than usual, too, which is another sign that the ERA might not match the quality of the pitches.
He had a neck injury and he pitched worse because of it?
There are a lot of numbers up there. These might be the only ones that matter:
April-May: Eight starts, 3.26 ERA, .672 OPS allowed, 8.2 K/9
June-September: Nine starts, 7.89 ERA, .883 OPS allowed, 6.2 K/9
For the first part of his season, he was the same Verlander as he was in 2023. Once his neck started bothering him, he was cooked, especially when he came back in preparation for a postseason charge. This is the Occam’s Razor explanation, and it’s impossible to ignore. Sometimes baseball is complicated. Sometimes it isn’t. Verlander was hurt and he pitched worse because of it.
So that’s the answer, right? And it’s a happy ending? Because if the neck was really the culprit, he’s had months to recover. The Giants should expect the version of Verlander who was pitching just fine for the Astros last spring, case closed.
Except, hold on there. We’re talking about a pitcher turning 42 soon. You can’t just assume because an injury is in the past, there won’t be another one that will affect him in the same way. I’m not much older, and I sprained three ankles typing this sentence.
It was the neck that was hurt in 2024, but even if that’s in the past, it might be the oblique in 2025, or it might be the hamstring or the back or the knee bone or the thigh bone. It’s not of much comfort to blame an injury for the disastrous second half, even if it didn’t involve his arm or shoulder. There will be a lot of discomforting maladies in his future, by virtue of both his profession and his age. Maybe he’ll pitch through them, or maybe they’ll be as impossible to pitch around as they were last season.
We’ll know a lot more in a couple months. But if you’re going to rank possible reasons for a disappointing season, from least concerning to most concerning, you’d have “persistent shoulder soreness” near the top, along with a sudden loss of command or an absolute collapse with his velocity. A strange injury to a body part that pitchers typically don’t worry about would be closer to the bottom. If he were 32, it would be incredibly easy to assume he was going to be just fine. As is, the reasons to be bearish on Verlander could be a lot scarier. He was hurt, and he pitched worse because of it. The Giants are hoping he won’t be hurt next year.
Makes sense from here, even if there are fewer guarantees than usual.
(Photo: Nick Cammett / Diamond Images via Getty Images)
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