Verlander psyched to return to playoffs

He already had put together a freshman campaign that would win him the American League Rookie of the Year trophy the next month, and the Detroit Tigers tabbed him to start the World Series opener against St. Louis at Comerica Park. These should have been triumphant times for Justin Verlander, the first top AL rookie in the Fall Classic since the Yankees' Derek Jeter in 1996.

But for the hard-throwing righthander, five years ago, the reality didn't match the perception.

"I felt horrible," Verlander recalled earlier this week, in an interview with Newsday. "My arm felt horrible. I had a lot of fatigue going on."

He lost Game 1 and then the season-ending Game 5 to the champion Cardinals, and in four postseason starts, Verlander posted a 1-2 record and 5.82 ERA. Detroit has yet to return to the playoffs.

This year, however, the Tigers -- leading the AL Central by 2 1/2 games over Cleveland before last night's game against the Indians -- loom as an very intriguing postseason entry, and that's most of all because of Verlander, who has evolved from top AL rookie to, arguably, top AL pitcher, period.

The 28-year-old is ready, both physically and mentally. He's ready to be this year's AL version of Cliff Lee -- the ace who can change the dynamics of a playoff series. Who is capable of keeping a representative from the powerful AL East out of the World Series.

"After I kind of got my program down, in the last series of [2008], I told our pitching coach [Chuck Hernandez] at the time, I said, 'Man, I wish I could go back in time and feel like I do now back then,' " Verlander said. "See how things might have changed a little bit."

"You don't want to see him twice," Yankees ace CC Sabathia said of Verlander. "He's definitely that guy."

Added Rangers president Nolan Ryan, who knows a thing or two on this topic, of Verlander: "To me, he's the most dominating pitcher in the game right now."

The workhorse

Verlander's program incorporates, most importantly, "a lot more shoulder exercises," he said. He leads the major leagues with 202 2/3 innings pitched, marking his fifth straight campaign in which he has passed the 200 mark.

He's an established staff horse, in other words, so much so that the baseball world nodded its head in approval when the Tigers signed him to a five-year, $80-million extension in February 2010. Yet this season, he has considerably elevated his already impressive game. He is arguably the favorite to win the AL Cy Young Award, and he might even get consideration for the league's Most Valuable Player honors.

He leads the big leagues with 18 wins, and while improved statistical analysis has discounted the importance of that measure, Verlander backs up those wins with strong peripheral numbers. In addition to innings pitched, Verlander tops all pitchers in strikeouts (204) and wins above replacement for pitchers (7.0, according to Baseball-Reference.com's calculations).

He threw a no-hitter, the second of his career, against the Blue Jays on May 8, and he held Kansas City hitless for 5 2/3 innings into his next start on May 13. On July 31, he didn't allow a hit to the Angels until he picked up two outs in the eighth inning.

The pitcher

Verlander's fastball averages 95.1 miles per hour -- again the best in baseball, according to FanGraphs.com -- and he's notorious for adding octane late in games. He mixes in an impressive curveball, changeup and slider.

"This guy has got, really, three to four pitches that are way above average," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. "On a [standard scouting] scale of two to eight, you'd probably give his pitches sevens and eights, every one of them. There aren't too many guys with that.

"And then you take the command, which is something he fought for a while. Now he's probably up there pretty high, too, a six or a seven. He's gotten better and better, which you expected, and now he's in control mentally on the mound, too. Which makes it even worse."

Jim Leyland, who pushed for Verlander's permanent promotion to the big leagues back in 2006, has managed the likes of Cy Young Award winner Doug Drabek in Pittsburgh and Kevin Brown in Florida during 20 years on the job. Of Verlander, the Tigers manager said, simply, "He's the best I've had. He's the best."

The Tigers owned the second pick in the 2004 amateur draft, and as the club's scouting director Greg Smith prepared for this crucial moment, he wasn't blown away by Verlander's performance. Then 21, Verlander put together a 3.49 ERA in 105 2/3 innings pitched.

Smith, following the recommendation of area scout Bill Buck, liked what he saw in person more than what he saw in a boxscore.

"Watching Justin that spring, I saw a competitiveness," said Smith, who now has the same job for the Pirates. "With the way he went about his business, he had extra gears I hadn't seen guys get to at the amateur level."

The warrior

Verlander believes his competitiveness came naturally. "It seemed like from day one, that's just the way I was," he said. "[My parents] would always have to tell me to slow down at everything, because I always wanted to be first. First to walk. First to finish my food. It's just the way I've always been.

"It's a curse in some aspects of my life, but in this aspect, I think it's nothing but beneficial, that drive to win and succeed and be the best. You can't artificially replace that. You can't make yourself have that mentality if it's not built into you. It's the way I was born."

"Even though he was a junior in college, I thought there was more in there," Smith said. "You just felt there was more in there, more to refine, more to harness." So when the Padres selected high school shortstop and San Diego native Matt Bush, who never made the major leagues and now pitches in Tampa Bay's minor-league system, Detroit popped Verlander.

(For what it's worth, the Mets picked third, and Verlander "was at the top of our board," said Jim Duquette, then the team's general manager. Jered Weaver was still available, but the Mets instead went with college pitcher Philip Humber, and Weaver went to the Angels with the 12th pick.)

The thinker

Verlander said he has come further along mentally than physically, and he credits his worst major-league season, 2008, for pushing him to his current heights. Verlander recorded a 4.84 ERA in '08, and he blames it on mechanics and an inexplicable loss of his stuff, rather than any health issues.

"I had a pretty good stretch of pitching without my stuff. So that's something that I also look back at and say that's helped me a lot now," he said. "I can recall pitching without the 98, 99 mph fastball. I said, 'I'm going to get guys out without stuff.'

" . . . Once I started to figure that out a little bit, I got better and better as the year went on. I felt like I was pitching a little bit. All of a sudden, the next year, I get my stuff back, I figured out what was going on and kind of combined the both of them. That's why I think I got to another level."

"He's made a lot of mental adjustments," Leyland said. "And that's the way it is with all players. You hear sometimes, 'What's wrong with a guy?' He's a rookie. That's what he is. He's a rookie. You can't make a senior out of a freshman."

The anchor

Now, as the big man on baseball's campus, he hopes to be active in October. The other AL teams? Not so much.

The Yankees' Curtis Granderson, formerly Verlander's teammate in Detroit, recalled a recent conversation he had with non-playing friends.

"People were talking and saying, 'Detroit might be in the playoffs again.' They said, 'What do they have? They've got no pitching.' I said, 'Well, you've got Verlander for sure in Game 1, whoever goes in Game 2 or Game 3, and then there's a good chance you'd have to face Verlander again.

"I wouldn't want to take that chance. I mean, if you have to, of course you do it. But that's definitely not one you put on your list of things you want to do."

"When you're a kid playing Little League Baseball, you don't envision being on the mound of game 100 of the season," Verlander said. "You picture getting on the mound in the World Series, the playoffs. Stuff like, my first-ever start at Yankee Stadium was at the old Yankee Stadium in a playoff game [in '06]. How cool is that?

"Special things happen in the playoffs, and that's where I want to be."

This time, if the Tigers can qualify, the only people who will feel horrible are those who have to step into the batter's box and face Verlander.