Justin Verlander getting comfortable with new friends (Mets) and an old pal (his changeup)
Mets pitcher Justin Verlander during a spring training workout, Friday Feb. 17, 2023 in Port St. Lucie, Fla. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — The themes of Justin Verlander’s spring training are change, change and change.
He changed teams, so he is in camp with a new club for the first time in his career, a dynamic he likened to switching schools, which he actually did as a teenager more than two decades ago.
He changed his routine; this is his first normal spring training in four years, so he has had to relearn what normal is.
And he is working on his change — as in his changeup, the pitch he has thrown the least in recent years but wants to throw more now.
The goal of all that change is to stay the same, to be as good in his first year with the Mets as he was last year in winning his third Cy Young Award.
But first he has to make friends.
“It’s difficult. This is really my first time doing this,” said Verlander, whose only previous team change, from the Tigers to the Astros, came at the trade deadline in 2017. “But it really does feel a lot like going to a new school . . . Everybody has kind of got their cliques, everybody knows each other and they’re just trying to get to know you and I’m trying to get to know them.
“It’s fun. The last few years, if you’ve kind of paid attention at all to what I’ve been saying, I really take a vested interest in trying to get to know my teammates, communicate better and help guys as much as I possibly can. Taking that mindset into this is going to help.”
Verlander spoke after throwing two simulated innings of live batting practice, his first such occasion of camp, against Brandon Nimmo, Francisco Alvarez and others. That outing was successful in that it was uneventful; at this time of year, especially for a pitcher of his caliber, boring is good.
He is scheduled to make a Grapefruit League start — his first time wearing a Mets uniform in a game, even if it is just an exhibition — on Friday or Saturday, he said.
These old rhythms of spring training feel sort of new to Verlander, who hasn’t had the benefit of a routine camp since before the 2019 season.
In 2020, his season — like everybody’s life — got paused by the pandemic. In 2021, he was coming off Tommy John surgery, so he wasn’t doing much at all at this point. And in 2022, in a shortened ramp-up after the lockout, Verlander still was working his way back from the most serious injury of his career, healthy but sore and cautious.
Now, finally, he is experiencing a regular preseason. He started throwing early in the offseason so that if he did get extra sore, as he often did last season, his first back in action after the surgery, he would have time to recover. But he has encountered no such issues.
“Last year, pretty much the whole season, I viewed it as an extension of my rehab [even though] I wasn’t technically still in that rehab window,” he said. “[In spring training] I’ve kind of forgotten exactly where I’m supposed to be. First normal spring since 2019 for me. So I’ve asked a lot of my agent and old pitching coaches. Like, hey, where was I at at this time? I think I’m right where I need to be.”
Verlander’s desire to sharpen his changeup is part of a yearslong quest to re-implement that pitch. In posting a career-best and majors-leading 1.75 ERA last season, he relied on a fastball, slider and curveball.
The changeup used to be one of his regular offerings — in a couple of seasons, his second- most-common pitch after only the four-seamer — but the usage dwindled in the middle of the last decade as he lost his feel for it.
After entering 2022 considering the changeup a priority, he wound up throwing it only about twice per start. So he went back at it in recent months and will try again this season. He views the changeup as a complement to his slider.
“Well, I worked at it, so I want to use it. I don’t want to waste my time,” he said with a chuckle. “I’d like to get my other stuff sharp first because I know that, I know what works, and I feel like [the changeup is] pretty close. I’ll start working it in.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
