Justin Verlander

2022 - 12 - 5

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Image courtesy of "MLB Trade Rumors"

Mets To Sign Justin Verlander (MLB Trade Rumors)

He eventually re-signed with the Astros on a one-year, $25MM deal with a matching $25MM player option for 2023 on the condition that Verlander reached 130 ...

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Image courtesy of "Forbes"

Mets Upgrade By Essentially Trading Jacob deGrom For Justin ... (Forbes)

Baseball's Winter Meetings are underway, and player movement has lifted off in earnest. In the biggest pitching moves so far, the Texas Rangers have signed ...

The Mets don’t take a hit qualititatively in 2023-24, have comparable or greater upside with much less risk in the short-term, and now can go after other high-end players with the ability to back-load deals into the 2025-27 time frame. The Rangers have some interesting kids on the way, but have a dicey risk/reward profile and might not have any big financial bullets left. I loved deGrom’s last contract, a five-year, $137.5M deal with an opt-out that he just utilized, because 1) he was the reigning best pitcher in baseball in his prime, and 2) he was healthy. To summarize, deGrom posted a cumulative K/BB ratio of 524/90 in 421 innings over those two seasons, while managing contact better than any pitcher in the league. deGrom was healthy in the 2020 pandemic season, and was as dominant as ever. He won back-to-back NL Contact Manager of the Year awards in 2018 and 2019 with matching 77 Adjusted Contact Scores. I simply add the Ks and BBs back to the equation after calculating Adjusted Contact Score, then spread the difference between the player’s “Tru” ERA and league average over their innings bulk to calculate “Tru” Pitching Runs Above Average (TPRAA). While deGrom’s quality has been as good as ever in 2021-22, his quantity has been way down. Both of these pitchers have been among the game’s best for an extended period; Verlander’s led his league in Ks five times, deGrom two, while the former has a 782/109 K/BB ratio and the latter a 876/127 mark since 2018. Going back to 2016 (the first season with 100% reliable granular batted ball data), Verlander has never won his league’s Contact Manager of the Year award, though he has greatly improved in this discipline. To qualify for such superlatives, one must excel at all of the central tenets of pitching - missing bats, minimizing walks and managing contact. That’s less apparent to the naked statistical eye, and requires peeling back a layer or two of the player’s record.

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Image courtesy of "Deadspin"

The Mets prove you don't have to have holes if you don't want to (Deadspin)

The Mets don't have to be unique. There are plenty of teams that wouldn't have to use the departure of a player like Jacob deGrom as an excuse to declare ...

They have an advantage over Philly in that they can actually catch the ball and haven’t completely lopsided their roster that the Phillies can only cover up in short bursts like the playoffs. Which is why you’ll be hearing about the Mets for a while. They need an arm or two to bridge to Edwin Diaz, especially if Scherzer and Verlander’s innings are going to be curbed in the regular season. Sure, there has to come a day when the bill of the 3,100 innings he’s thrown in the regular season, and the additional 200 in the postseason, will come due. There isn’t a lot of room to back up, because you have the Braves that are still nailed on to win 95-100 games, and the Phillies still have their top-heavy roster that could pop up with nearly the same. And yet it feels like only the Mets are willing to play this like the NBA would.

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Image courtesy of "Sports Illustrated"

OPINION: Houston Astros Will be Just Fine Without Justin Verlander (Sports Illustrated)

Justin Verlander agreed to a two-year, $86 million contract with the New York Mets. The Houston Astros should not take a significant hit in 2022 without the ...

The Astros replaced Correa internally with young prospect Jeremy Pena, who would go on to win the 2022 World Series MVP Award. will remain at the top of the rotation. The Astros have a deeper pitching staff than perhaps any other team in Major League Baseball. The Astros might be the only team in baseball to lose a reigning Cy Young without taking a significant hit. The Astros' best prospect Hunter Brown, who got a sniff of the big leagues down the stretch of 2022, could be in line for a promotion to the club's rotation in 2023. In seven appearances and 20.1 innings in his premier big league season, Brown was electric, allowing just two runs, 15 hits and seven walks to the tune of a 0.89 ERA and 1.08 WHIP. [@JackVitaShow,](http://twitter.com/jackvitashow) and subscribe to his podcast, the [Jack Vita Show](http://jackvita.com/), available on [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jack-vita-show/id1366064261), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/5bfwYRxkua8fl8Cyp5Ju7i?si=bU85dgJdR7KKuC4kdUwoIw&nd=1), [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/jackvita), [Amazon](https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f29527c0-7534-4401-9891-8d0e7d09363a/jack-vita-show), [iHeartRadio](https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-jack-vita-show-74691662/), and wherever podcasts are found. The depth of their rotation gave the club a significant edge in the World Series over the Philadelphia Phillies, and in my opinion, played a determining factor in the series. The Astros could develop yet another lights-out starter, that could have the highest upside among all young pitchers on the roster. Earlier this week, the Houston Astros said goodbye to the 2022 American League Cy Young and a staple of their pitching rotation for the past five and a half years, Justin Verlander. The Astros could add a veteran pitcher via trade or the free agent market, but it seems likely that they'll once again look to their loaded farm system for a replacement to Verlander. Jose Urquidy and Luis Garcia can fill out the remainder of the rotation, but one pitcher could be the odd man out.

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