Verlander’s 2011 Season Might Just Be the Beginning of the Rest of His Career

If Justin Verlander can ever figure out how to pitch in the month of April, he might flirt with 30 wins every year, not 20.

Verlander, the AL Cy Young and MVP winner for 2011, went to Lakeland last February on a mission.

He wanted very much to slay his personal dragon that is April. His first months of his seasons have been warts on an otherwise brilliant (so far) career.

Verlander, prior to 2011, had been a tortoise in April. The fact that he’s turned hare the rest of the season has been comforting, but you were always left to wonder: how good of a season might he have had, if he didn’t wait till May to get going?

Even 2011, his year of years, had some of that slow startness to it, albeit not tortoise-like. More like Victor Martinez type slow.

Verlander’s ERA in April was 3.64. On most teams that would make you the no. 2 starter—at least.

But this is Justin Verlander we’re talking about. The kid who can bring you to your feet in the first inning and keep you there, as you look over at the left field scoreboard and see a string of zeroes to the right of the team the Tigers are playing that day.

And I mean ALL the way to the right, if you get my drift.

Baseball and numbers are like peanut butter and jelly; separate, they’re good, but combined they create a tasty treat.

So here are some more numbers.

Verlander’s season ERA was 2.40, which means that his April mark of 3.64 was a full 1.24 run higher, or about 50%.

His record in April was 2-3. After that, he went on a 22-2 run. His ERA from May on was 2.15.

Verlander made six starts in April, gaining a decision in five of them. Had he won all six, he would have been just two wins away from becoming the first 30-game winner since Denny McLain in 1968.

Crazy talk? How do you figure?

Verlander had winning streaks of seven and 12 games in 2011. JV winning six in a row isn’t exactly a pie-in-the-sky type of thought.

That’s the bottom line: if Verlander went 6-0 in April, he’d have won 28 games. Math is till math.

And this is the era of the five-man rotation, by the way. McLain won his 31 games pitching every fourth day for the ’68 Tigers. On a couple occasions, Denny took the hill on just two days’ rest.

The five-man rotation inevitably will provide an extra day’s rest, due to off days. In 2011, Verlander pitched on five days’ rest on 11 occasions, instead of his usual four. That’s about a third of his 34 starts.

Could Verlander ever win 30 games in a season?

It’s not likely—but it is possible.

Yes, 34 or 35 starts (the average for a no. 1 starter) doesn’t leave much margin for error—or for no decisions. The good news is that Verlander doesn’t really need a margin for error.

His 22-2 mark after April proves that.

Verlander’s 29 decisions in 2011 were the most in his still young career. His 251 innings eclipsed his previous high by 11 innings.

The numbers continue to be staggering, the more you look at them.

Aside from a 2008 season (17 losses) that is looking more and more like an anomaly, Verlander has never lost more than nine games in a season. In 2007 he lost six; in 2011, he lost five.

In six big league seasons, Verlander has: won the Rookie of the Year Award; pitched in a World Series; pitched in two LDS series and two LCS series; thrown two no-hitters; come close to at least two more; won a Cy Young Award; and won an MVP Award.

He’s 28 years old.

Could Justin Verlander end up being the greatest pitcher in Detroit Tigers history?

Hey, is he already?

I’m a grizzled, cranky old coot most of the time. I’m not one to anoint anyone after six paltry seasons. I still think Oscar Robertson was better than Michael Jordan, to show you.

But sometimes a player comes along who just gives off a vibe that he’s only going to get better—or at the very least, not let up.

Justin Verlander strikes me as that kind of player.

It’s almost mind-numbing to look at Verlander’s numbers so far and then imagine the damage he can do by the time he’s 35 years old.

He has 107 wins now. By 35 he could have nearly 250.

He has 1,215 strikeouts now. By 35 he could have over 2,800.

He has two no-hitters now. By 35 he could threaten Nolan Ryan’s record of seven no-nos.

How many more Cy Youngs will he win? And now that he’s captured the MVP, who’s to say that he can’t do it again in the near future?

Barring the unthinkable—a major health issue—I’d say that Justin Verlander is on track to a place in Cooperstown.

Kind of makes all the debate about whether a pitcher should win an MVP Award rather silly, doesn’t it?

Compared to Jeter, Kaline’s Quest for 3,000 Hits Almost Done in Private

The 39-year-old outfielder reported to spring training in Lakeland, Florida—except he was an outfielder in your heart only, and a designated hitter in your program.

Al Kaline was prepping for his 22^nd and final season as a Tiger. It was February, 1974, when no. 6, as much as it pained him, agreed to put his glove away for good, nearly two months before the season even began.

Now, Kaline shelving the glove ought not to have been allowed. This was Louie Armstrong agreeing to show up to a jazz festival sans trumpet so that he may be the designated singer.

But new manager Ralph Houk wanted Kaline’s bat in the lineup everyday, so it was determined by manager and outfield—oops, DH—that Kaline would make the American League circuit one last time lugging only a Louisville Slugger. Never would Al’s left hand slide into a mitt the entire season.

The designated hitter, a rotten invention, was actually a salve in a way, because it relieved many a butcher from the duties of defense. It’s like that old line, “He’s got a face made for radio.” In baseball, there were a bunch of guys with gloves made for DH.

But Kaline, of course, was not one of those butchers. Even at his advanced age, Kaline could out-glove half the league, and out-throw the other half. The kid from Baltimore who never played an inning in the minor leagues didn’t invent right field, but he perfected it.

All this was fresh on Tigers fans’ minds when Kaline showed up to Lakeland in ’74 and started limbering up, getting his old bones ready for one more season.

That, and the carrot on the stick that Kaline would be chasing for the majority of the year: the coveted career hit total of 3,000.

After 21 years, Kaline stood at 2,861 hits. He needed 139 for three grand, but for a few years prior to 1974, Al had settled into being a part-time player under manager Billy Martin.

Kaline collected just 285 hits from 1971-73, and now he needed half of that, just about, in one season to reach 3,000.

It would have to come in 1974 or it wouldn’t come at all. Kaline made it clear that ’74 was his last season, 3,000 hits or not.

Kaline’s march to 3,000 hits seemed to be played out in a vacuum, and only in Detroit. This was five years before the invention of ESPN. The Internet was nearly a generation away from infiltrating our lives.

The local papers ran subtle, oh-by-the-way countdowns of Kaline’s progress as the Tigers, a bad team in ’74, stumbled through the season.

As much as it pained folks to see the great Al Kaline reduced to half a player, it nonetheless was the best way for him to make his assault on 3,000 hits as realistic as possible. Even as the team’s primary DH, it wasn’t until late-September that Kaline finally was knocking on destiny’s door.

But there was little drama; hardly any national fanfare to speak of, really, as Kaline traipsed toward 3,000.

Not even the fact that the Tigers were fittingly in Baltimore, Kaline’s hometown, with Al sitting on 2,999 hits, could prompt local television to pick up the game.

Think about that for a moment. Arguably the greatest Tiger of them all was about to become only the second player in franchise history to attain 3,000 hits, and he was going to do it where he grew up, yet there was no local telecast of the big moment beamed back to Detroit.

Kaline got no. 3,000 off the lefty Dave McNally, a double into the gap, on September 24, 1974, with only about a week to spare in the season.

A quick check with Retrosheet.org reveals that the attendance that night at Memorial Stadium was a polite 11,492, about 20 percent capacity.

Apparently Kaline’s collision course with history didn’t tickle the fancy of his hometown baseball denizens, either.

Kaline collected seven more hits before the season ended, just to make sure.

When Kaline got no. 3,000, he was only the 12^th player in big league history to accomplish that feat. It should have been a much bigger deal than it was.

I can’t help but think of Kaline’s low-key push for 3,000 hits as I see the hysteria over Derek Jeter and his quest for the same.

Jeter, maybe the greatest Yankee of them all, is poised to become the first player in that franchise’s glorious history to collect 3,000 hits. It’s hard to believe, considering all the Hall of Famers the Yankees have employed, that Kalamazoo’s Jeter, in baseball’s third century of business, is going to be the first Bronx Bomber to gather 3,000 hits, all coming while playing for the Yankees.

The magic hit could come this weekend; Jeter has 2,998 hits as I write this.

Jeter needed just 74 safeties to make history, entering the 2011 season. But his 37-year-old body has been stubborn, affecting his performance like no other time in his career. The 16 seasons Jeter has played as the Yankees shortstop have decided to catch up with him all at once, it seems.

So here it is, almost the All-Star break, and Jeter is chugging toward 3,000 hits like the Little Engine That Could.

And, playing for the Yankees in the biggest media market in the universe, Jeter has been followed by a caravan of media in recent days. His 3,000^th won’t occur in a vacuum.

Fifteen players have crossed the 3,000 hit threshold since Kaline did it some 37 years ago—in the same year that Derek Jeter was born. It’s not as big a deal as it used to be.

But Jeter is a Yankee, and he’s not only going to be the first Yankee to do it, but very likely the last to do it for a very long time. Maybe the last ever, given the state of today’s game, with players not staying in the same city for much longer than the length of a Harry Potter movie.

Al Kaline put his glove away so he could be in the lineup as much as possible, the better to make 3,000 hits a reality by the end of the season. He did it almost privately.

Jeter, a Hall of Famer in his own right, is assaulting the mark with a cadre of media following his every move.

Those damn Yankees.

Morris a Hall of Famer, If You Look at the Right Numbers

You want the Cliff’s Notes to Jack Morris’s pitching career? I’ll give them to you, boiled down to two games. And that’s out of 562—it doesn’t get more pared down than that.

It’s a cool Saturday in early April, 1984 in Chicago. The Tigers are off to a 3-0 start to their season. Maybe they could keep it up and get out of the gate fast; who knows?

Morris is on the mound at Comiskey Park, and he’s off to a rousing start—the first nine White Sox are up and down in order, and already Jack has registered four strikeouts.

Then Morris gets erratic in the fourth inning, walking the bases loaded with nobody out. His brilliance has suddenly vanished. The White Sox fans are bundled up and ready to burst out, sensing a big inning.

Chicago’s cleanup hitter, Greg “Baby Bull” Luzinski, is at the plate. The Tigers’ measly 2-0 lead looks about as safe as a drunk’s wallet in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

But Morris throws a split-fingered fastball—his specialty—and gets Luzinski to tap the baseball back to the mound. Morris, a.k.a. The Cat, pounces on it and starts a nifty pitcher-to-catcher-to-first base double play.

The next batter, Ron Kittle, strikes out. Threat over, inning over.

The White Sox fans suddenly are gagging on their Chicago dogs.

Except for one leather-lunged buffoon.

Morris gets through the fifth, and the sixth, and the White Sox still don’t have a hit. Jack walks four batters through six innings, but is being a cheapskate with the base hits.

The leather-lunged fan situated behind the Tigers’ dugout begins taunting Morris, trying to jinx his no-hitter.

“You’ll never get your no-hitter, Jack!” the fan bellows, among other things unfit to print here.

Morris takes note, his eyes narrowing at the fan every time he walks back to the dugout, having registered another hitless frame.

In the seventh, Morris walks another. That’s five free passes, but still no hits.

Also in the seventh, Dave Bergman, a slick-fielding first baseman, enters the game for, of course, defensive purposes. Makes sense.

Right on cue in the seventh, Bergman sprawls to his left, snaring a hard ground ball apparently destined to prove the leather-lunged fan correct. But Bergman, on his back, flips the ball to Morris, covering first base.

The no-hitter is saved, but the blowhard behind the Tigers’ dugout doesn’t quit.

“Two more innings, Jack! Think you can do it? I don’t think so!”

Morris narrows his eyes some more at the dude.

In the ninth inning, the Tigers safely ahead, 4-0, Morris walks Luzinski with two outs, the sixth base on balls. But still no White Sox hits.

Finally, Morris finishes his gem. He strikes out Kittle again—on a split-finger, of course—and within moments he’s engulfed inside the Paul Bunyan arms and barrel chest of catcher Lance Parrish.

A no-hitter! The first by a Tigers pitcher in nearly 30 years.

But there’s still some unfinished business.

After the mob gets off him, Morris makes his way back to the dugout. He sees the blowhard fan.

“I GOT YOUR TWO MORE INNINGS, YOU $#!@!” Morris screams at the screamer.

NOW Jack can celebrate his no-hitter in the clubhouse.

Fast forward seven years and six months later.

Morris is on the mound for his home state Minnesota Twins against the Atlanta Braves. It’s Game 7 of the World Series—that’s all.

The Twins are playing Game 7 thanks to a Kirby Puckett home run in the bottom of the 11^th of Game 6 the night before—they call it a “walk-off homer” these days.

So here comes Morris, working on three days’ rest, which is one day less than his norm during the regular season. Twins manager Tom Kelly hopes he can get six or seven innings out of his ace before turning matters over to his bullpen.

A pitching duel breaks out between Morris and the Braves’ John Smoltz. The game is scoreless headed into the eighth inning.

Suddenly, Morris is in a jam—big time. A leadoff single and a double put runners on second and third with nobody out. The Braves’ runner at third, Lonnie Smith, inexplicably hesitates rounding second base, costing his team a run.

But a rally with runners on second and third with no outs ought to produce at least one run, right?

Wrong, for this is Jack Morris, one of the best clutch pitchers in our lifetime.

Morris induces a weak grounder to first. Then he intentionally walks David Justice, filling the bases, setting the stage for an inning-ending double play.

Which Morris gets, when Sid Bream grounds into an unusual first-to-catcher-to-first DP. Threat over, inning over. World Series, far from over.

Smoltz is replaced in the bottom of the eighth, but the Twins fail to score.

Morris sets down the side in order in the ninth inning. It’ll go down as a complete game in the record books, but the game is hardly complete in the truest sense.

The Twins put a goose egg on the board in the ninth. Would Morris return to the mound in the 10th inning? Of Game 7 of the World Freaking Series?

Would he!

Manager Kelly tries to pull him, but Morris would have none of it. Jack is ready to meet Kelly in the runway and go bare-fisted with his manager in order to pitch the 10th.

Morris takes the hill in the 10th, and the three Braves at-bat don’t even get the ball out of the infield. They go down: pop up, strikeout, ground out.

The Twins scratch out a run in the bottom of the 10th to win the World Series. Morris pitches 10 shutout innings on three days’ rest, is 2-0 in the series and wins the MVP Award. His ERA in the series is 1.17.

Those two games capsulate Jack Morris—the man and the pitcher: snarling, defiant, brilliant, fearless. And cocky.

They didn’t let Morris into the Hall of Fame again this week. That makes 12 years in a row. Of the needed 75 percent, Morris was named on a little more than half the ballots. He’s still not all that close.

You want to play numbers? You want to come at me with your 3.90 ERA—the number that the anti-Morris folks love to throw out there?

OK, let’s play some numbers.

Morris won 254 games and had a winning percentage of .577, which for a baseball team equals a 93-win season. He walked an average of 3.3 batters per nine innings, while striking out nearly six per nine. He won 163 games in the 1980s, including 20 or more twice in the decade. In another year, he won 19.

He won seven postseason games and lost only four. Twice he was 2-0 in a World Series (1984 Tigers, 1991 Twins).

They used to say that Hall of Fame goalie Grant Fuhr might not have the prettiest goals-against average around, but when the marbles were on the line, Fuhr would make the big stop.

You say you don’t like Morris’ 3.90 ERA, which would be the highest for any pitcher in the Hall of Fame if he was inducted?

I’ll take the wins—an untold number of which came when there were a lot of marbles on the table.

Hang in there, Jack. Sooner or later those voting folks are bound to come to their senses.

 

Trammell’s Lack Of Hall Consideration Appalling

“It’s embarrassing and despicable, what the Hall voters are doing to Trammell’s legacy.”

It’s not a question, anymore, of whether Alan Trammell is a Hall of Famer. Sadly, that debate seems to be getting squashed with each passing year. His chances have pretty much drained away.

What’s of more concern is why he’s been so brutally ignored.

They had the yearly ballotting on Monday, and Rickey Henderson, as expected, was elected on the first try, gathering well over 90% of the votes. Understood. Henderson had over 3,000 hits, and is the all-time base stealer in MLB history.

Jim Rice made it — on his 15th and final appearance on the ballot. Rice’s next chance wouldn’t have come until he was eligible to be voted on by the Veterans Committee.

Rice, it should be pointed out, didn’t slug one more home run, drive in one more run, or gather one more base hit in those fifteen years. Yet he’s a Hall of Famer in 2009, when he wasn’t in 2008, or 2003, or 1999. I’ll leave that one to you to figure out.

I have no problem with Rice, though his career numbers don’t knock your Red Sox off. He was, in his time, one of the more feared hitters in baseball. His brute strength was legendary. This isn’t a Hall prerequisite, but Jim Rice could club a golf ball some 400 yards off a tee. Easily.

You can debate Rice’s qualifications till the cows come home. It would be a fun debate, too, because I believe you could make a strong case both ways.

But back to Trammell.

The former Tigers shortstop was again buried in the voting results, somewhere near the dudes who are clearly not Hall of Famers. It’s getting worse now. It’s almost mean-spirited, the lack of love Alan Trammell gets during Hall voting time.

Forget Lou Whitaker. Tram’s double play partner vanished from the ballot a while ago. He, too, won’t reappear until the Veterans have their crack at him. Whitaker is another who was tossed back into the ocean.

I’ve said it before: if those two played in New York, they’d be in Cooperstown by now. Or, at the very least, they’d be Jim Rice-like — knocking on the door.

I’m torn on Trammell and Whitaker, truthfully. If you play the comparison game — putting their numbers up against Hall members who played their positions — you could make a strong case for induction. But if you play the Wow Factor — that intangible feeling you get when you see a sure-fire Hall of Famer’s name — then I wonder. Then, it becomes more murky.

But as I said at the top, the debate about Trammell’s Hall worthiness is the train that’s left the station. Say goodbye to it, and get comfy while you wait for the Veterans car to come down the tracks.

Why is what Trammell (and Whitaker, for that matter) accomplished scorned so? Whose kid did he slay? Whose corn flakes got peed on?

It’s embarrassing and despicable, what the Hall voters are doing to Trammell’s legacy.

He’s being treated as a commoner, like a Bobby Bonilla or Ron Gant type.

Ok, so Trammell wasn’t Ozzie Smith, in terms of panache or flair. He didn’t do back flips on the field, or have a catchy nickname like The Wizard of Oz. All Tram did was make all the right plays, at all the right times. Substance over style. Oh, and he could hit a bit, too. Before players like Trammell came along, shortstops were chained to the eighth spot in the batting order, just above pitcher. After the DH was enacted, the shortstops routinely took over the pitcher’s no. 9 spot in the order. But after Trammell, and Cal Ripken Jr., and others, and after we saw that shortstops could hit (imagine!), suddenly they were batting cleanup and third and leadoff.

So you can say that Trammell was part of a contingent who changed the game.

But, that and a quarter will get you a cup of coffee, and nothing else, I’m afraid. Alan Trammell won’t be a Hall of Famer — unless it happens many years hence.

It’ll be up to the Veterans Committee to give him some overdue respect. Because he sure never got it from these jokers.

Now That Closers Are Allowed In, Why Keep DHs Out Of Hall?

Two down, one to go – at least.

First, it was Bruce Sutter in 2006, who pitched for years with that lumberjack-like, bushy beard. This year it’s Richard “Goose” Gossage, who pitched for years with that intimidating Fu Manchu mustache.

Clearly the facial hair didn’t help either man’s chances at the Hall of Fame. Nor did their statistics, or how they impacted the game. Or the winning teams they played on – or, in Gossage’s case, not even having his most marquee years in New York, a city known to be a boon to Hall of Fame chances with other players. The only thing that worked to get Sutter and Gossage inducted was the wearing down of the voters’ resistance over time.

There can be, I suppose, at least a degree of slack given to the folks who cast ballots for the baseball Hall of Fame in their stubborn refusal to consider relief pitchers for induction. After all, the phenomenon of the “closer” – known in various decades as the “stopper” or the “fireman”, depending on when you started following the game – didn’t really come into prominence until the 1970s. Prior to that, your best pitchers were your starters – mainly because they pitched the whole game most of the time, so why wouldn’t those guys be your best arms?

Watching the Tigers on television a few weeks ago, on the night the team honored the 1968 World Series champs, I was taken by the words of former reliever Darryl Patterson, a member of that wonderful outfit in ’68. Patterson was asked how many save opportunities he got, back in the day.

“Well,” he said with a wry chuckle, “(Denny) McLain finished all of his games, and (Mickey) Lolich finished all of his games, and (Earl) Wilson just about finished all of his games, so that didn’t leave too many chances for guys like me,” Patterson continued, and the booth erupted.

It’s true.

In ’68, McLain, Lolich, Wilson, and Joe Sparma combined to complete 53 games (McLain himself pitched 28 complete games out of 41 starts). That’s a third of the 162-game schedule. And if they didn’t complete the game, they came darn close on many occasions, leaving few outs for the bullpen to worry about. There was one stretch, in September, when Tigers starters completed 12 straight games. Their relief pitchers needn’t have bothered to even show up for a couple of weeks.

But in the ‘70s, perhaps fueled by the designated hitter (keep reading to find out more about the DH), which ratcheted up the offense in the American League, starters finished fewer games. And the role of the “fireman” – the late-inning guy who would come in and pitch out of jams – became more and more important.

Sutter and Gossage were more than just finishers, though. They were no ninth-inning only pitchers, like the closers of today. Today’s closer often starts the ninth inning, the bases empty, the pressure gauge lower than it was in the days of Sutter and Gossage, who more often than not jumped into the fray after the starter left them with a mess – and not just in the ninth inning. Gossage, for one, would sometimes come into the game as early as the sixth inning – and finish the game.

It wasn’t until the early-1990s when the ‘70s generation of firemen/stoppers/closers became eligible for the Hall of Fame. At first, their appearance on the ballot was mostly scorned and derided.

“Hall of Fame? For a guy who pitched a couple innings here and there?”

Well, yeah – since those just happened to be the most crucial innings of the damn game.

It took awhile for the voters to catch on.

Finally, they did, and Sutter was elected in 2006 – the first true relief pitcher to be so honored. Grouchy at the time was Gossage, whose numbers were every bit as good. And Gossage wasn’t shy to voice his displeasure – not with any ill will toward Sutter, just at those who didn’t seem to understand that what was good for the gander was good for the Goose.

The error was corrected this year; Gossage was inducted just last week. And in regards to my opening sentence, the third reliever that belongs is Lee Smith, who is still waiting for justice himself.

Now, as promised, some words about another group of players who are being shunned.

Edgar Martinez was one of the finest hitters of his time. There were years when he may have been considered the best pure hitter in the game. Ten times he hit over .300 in a season, sometimes wayyyy over .300. He had seasons of .356 and .343 and .337. It was especially impressive, since Martinez was a right-handed hitter in a game where the vast majority of pitchers throw right-handed.

Martinez: should be considered a serious Hall candidate, despite his DH-only status

But Edgar Martinez is now the victim of having played his entire career in the era of the designated hitter. He didn’t make the rules, he only played within them. Yet there are those who would penalize him for that.

Martinez played his last game in 2004. A player isn’t eligible to appear on the Hall ballot until he’s been retired five years. So in January, 2010, Martinez’s name will appear for the first time, his candidacy to be considered officially by the notoriously slow-learning vote casters. As the calendar rolls along, there’s more and more talk about Martinez, and others like him, who played most of their games as DHs. And, as with the firemen, there is rancor.

“Hall of Fame? For half a player?”

For me, the DH is a bane. I, personally, don’t care for it. Still – and it’s been around for 36 years. It’s not the way the game, I believe, was meant to be played. Yet I refuse to penalize those who did that job, and did it well, because they weren’t the ones who included it in the rule book.

Yes, the DH has allowed aging players to stick around when they, by rights, should have been forced into retirement the moment they became liabilities defensively. Willie Horton had one of the best years of his career in 1979, aged 36, as a full-time DH for Seattle – when Willie had no business playing the outfield.

So you would hold that against them? The full-time DHs played baseball the way it was deemed, for their era. The rules said someone gets to bat and not wear a glove. So some simply went out and became the best hitters they could be. Like Edgar Martinez. He had over 2,200 hits and a career average of .312. They aren’t shoo-in numbers, but they’re worth considering – not to be mocked.