The old Justin Verlander is still in there somewhere

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The Giants lost to the Phillies on Wednesday afternoon, 13-0, but it wasn’t as close as it sounds. Bryce Harper had four extra-base hits, including a home run, and Jesús Luzardo might have had the best outing any starter has had against the Giants this season. Tristan Beck couldn’t get anyone out in the middle innings, and the game was so lopsided that Mike Yastrzemski pitched the ninth.

It wasn’t a complicated game to understand. The overall series was a success, but the finale was a stinker. You don’t need any silver linings, and it’s not my intention to force feed them to you like lima beans.

So take this article in the spirit in which it’s intended. It would have been a much more enjoyable read if the Giants had, say, won the game, 13-0, but the outcome was never going to change the premise. A disastrous, six-run second inning wouldn’t have changed the premise. The first three outs were all anyone needed to reach this conclusion:

Holy heck, did Justin Verlander look good on Wednesday.

The box score only hints at it. Six innings, no walks and seven strikeouts is a mighty fine line, but it’s dragged down by the two earned runs and four total runs allowed. The contact was mostly soft, though, and the hitters were generally uncomfortable. It was a strong start overall.

Verlander probably doesn’t care much about consolation prizes right now. He still hasn’t won a game for the Giants in 15 starts, which is the longest winless streak to begin a season from a starting pitcher in franchise history. The major-league record to start a season is 23, so he doesn’t have to worry about that just yet. But if he had to choose between “looking like he had his best stuff” and “winning,” he’d choose the latter every time.

Still, while Verlander’s winless streak has been plodding along, it’s been far too easy to forget about his upside. The Giants didn’t just sign him to be an anthropomorphic 4.50 ERA with a lot of cool stories and helpful advice. They were hoping he could still offer upside and run prevention, something more than a fifth starter to get them through 162 games. They were hoping for a guy with a chance to start postseason games. Heck, maybe even an elimination game, if needed. He was supposed to be more than a guy; he was supposed to be effective at preventing runs.

As recently as last week, when he was getting shelled in Sacramento, that version of Verlander seemed impossibly far away. Even bringing it up in passing would have seemed delusional. Then he threw some stuff to the wall, and it stuck. Literally.

“I threw some balls against the wall and felt some different mechanics that I’ve been thinking about, and I’m optimistic that will be the next thing that works. I’ve had two or three instances in my career where I kind of had to reinvent the wheel and everything I’ve known to try to fix something that doesn’t work.

“I feel like I’m kind of there where it’s like, ‘All right, well, now it’s time to just throw s— against the wall and see what works.’”

So to recap: Verlander got torched and threw a few balls against the wall. Then he had aha! moment about his mechanics, and he featured his best stuff of the season in his next start. It’s not exactly a classic baseball tale, but it sure is linear.

And I’m not being hyperbolic with the stuff. Again, forget everything that happened after the first inning, even though it was a quality start overall. Start with the very first pitch of the game.

Not every pitcher has the same pregame routine, but it’s easy to imagine this pitch being in Verlander’s head for the last five days. He was going to start the game off with his best fastball — both in terms of velocity and location. It’s hard to imagine a better first pitch of a game.

Here’s the first slider that Verlander threw for a strike. It was a quality enough pitch that he got a swinging strike, even though it was in the strike zone.

Here’s Verlander’s first changeup. It’s possible that it might be his best executed pitch as a Giant, no hyperbole. It was tempting without being hittable, an out if he swings, a mostly harmless 1-2 if he doesn’t.

Even his misses were great on Wednesday, at least early. And while we won’t get to the sweeper, we’ll end the look at the first inning with the final pitch, an absolute pearl of a curveball to Bryce Harper.

Look at how high that curve is at its peak. Harper’s eyes must have been big as Jolly Ranchers. It’s truly remarkable that the pitch ended up out of the strike zone, close enough to where it’s not unthinkable that Patrick Bailey frames it for a strike.

Those are four pitches in the same half-inning. They about as good as Verlander can throw them. Big whoop, you’re thinking. The Giants lost the game. They lose all of his games, more or less. Pretty videos of isolated pitches don’t lead to wins.

All of this is to point out that Verlander still might be more than a generic, innings-absorbing veteran who shuffles between supremely hittable and competent for five innings. In a perverse way, it almost makes sense to take those four pitches and use them to treat Verlander like a prospect.

Let me explain. Pretend that Verlander isn’t a living baseball legend. Pretend he’s a 22-year-old who was drafted in second round the year before. And, make no mistake, the stuff that Verlander showed off in those four pitches is very much worthy of a second-round draft grade, at least. Now you have a 22-year-old kid with a flashes of brilliance in the rotation. Every so often, he’ll throw a pitch that gives you ideas. Greedy ideas.

You stick with that hypothetical young pitcher. You’re going to need him. He’s going to need development time, and he’ll take some lumps as he figures it all out, but that’s gonna be your best shot. You wait out the turbulence and bet on the talent.

That’s Verlander, with the minor difference that he’s about twice the age of an actual prospect. But you’re grading his stuff as if he’s a prospect, as if you’re more interested in the future than the present. You’re looking to see how he’ll help a future Giants team as much as he’ll help the current one. The only difference is that this future Giants team is in October, not 2028.

If that’s the rubric, Verlander has passed. The guy the Giants hoped they were signing is still in there. It might take a lot of effort to get the version of him out. It will take stops and starts, IL trips and balls thrown against a wall, and it might take an uncomfortably long winless streak, but the dream is still alive. He’s not just supposed to be Jake Peavy crossed with Yoda, something between an innings eater and a mascot. He’s supposed to be a badass that other teams have to worry about.

Here’s where Verlander is different from some of the other Giants who have struggled for lengthy stretches this year, from Willy Adames and Bailey to Jung Hoo Lee. With those guys, there’s no backup plan. They are the plan. You commit to it until it’s completely obviously untenable. There isn’t a Casey Schmitt-for-Tyler Fitzgerald type tweak to make when things start to go sour with them.

Verlander is closer to that kind of player, even if it seems like there’s a fix right there, whether it’s Carson Whisenhunt, Carson Seymour or another unknown quantity. There will be an option to replace him as he goes through winless streaks and ups and downs, at least hypothetically speaking.

Ignore them. Verlander has shown enough to stick. He’s deserving of the same patience that you’d save for a top prospect, mostly because the goal is the same: You’re betting on his future performance. More specifically, you’re betting on that future performance being a lot better than any of the other options you’ll have.

And that’s how you can look at a dull, faceless 13-0 loss and think the Giants might be on to something. It takes a little imagination, and it forces you to take a guy who played Super Nintendo growing up and pretend that he’s 22 years old. But the Verlander who got the Giants excited in the offseason is still in there. He’s a reverse-prospect for them now, and it’s worth watching his starts to see if that first-inning performance can become his new normal. It’s what the Giants thought they were paying for in the first place, and it’s a ceiling worth chasing.

(Photo: D. Ross Cameron / Imagn Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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