Opposing pitcher scouting reports

His at bats? We're playing in the AL still inger. This isn't the World Series.

It's okay inger. Sometimes we are all OTOTAU.

6/23 vs. Houston Astros / Justin Verlander

There is a long and interesting story about how Then girlfriend Kate Upton helped to save Verlander’s career by introducing him to her physical therapist. It’s too long to get into here, but then end result was to help Verlander rediscover the arm slot he had before his shoulder surgery and the correct way to rotate his hips so he would not continue to compensate for his groin issues and stiffness in his ankles.

We’ll suffice here to say he went from having dropped down to a 3/4 arm slot back to the much higher arm slot of his youth. In turn he developed much more rise on his fastball, and much more downward plane on his curve and slider.

So here we have a 36 year old pitcher who still has not only 95+ MPH, touch 97 when he wants to, but has so much upward movement on the pitch as to be able to get swing and misses as well as failure to make square contact. Then you have off-speed pitches, the change up, curve, and slider that move more on a downward plane and with a wide speed contrast. All weapons are of the variety to cause mass destruction.

Not only is Verlander extremely good vs. RHH, but this season he is also crafting strong reverse splits that are rendering lefty hitters even weaker. Much weaker. Like .120 BA weak, seldom walking and seldom hitting him for extra bases.

There doesn’t appear to be a weakness until you dig a bit deeper, and even then, those are but slight cracks in the armor. In some games Verlander is slow to find his command and he can fall behind in counts in the first and second inning (particularly the first), walking a batter or two and causing him to come more to the middle of the plate. This is when most of the HR damage can be done and the best time to score runs on him. And that, the HR is his other weakness, but only to a rather minor degree because most of the time past those first couple of innings he only allows solo HR.

He goes against the grain of many pitchers with lesser endurance and weaker weaponry in that he is not at all made weaker by seeing a lineup three and even four times. He varies his arsenal in late innings and maintains the speed on his fastball past the 100-pitch mark.

So, the key is to hit him early, and take him deep early while he may still be vulnerable to command issues. If not, it can be a long game with a high strikeout total. One other piece of hope is that Verlander has been rather human in allowing runs the past three starts. Yet, he’s struck out 30 in the 20.1 innings he’s thrown while going 0-1. Perhaps we may catch him at the tail end of a slight down cycle this time around. Let’s hope so...