Justin Verlander’s Quest for 300 Wins Remains Alive and Well at 42

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Justin Verlander knows that his career is in its twilight, given his age and a series of injuries to his neck and arm. He’s also well aware that if he wants to achieve his longtime dream of winning 300 games, he needs to capitalize now.

The 42-year-old Verlander, who signed a one-year, $15 million contract with the San Francisco Giants in January, has been healthy and missing bats while ramping up his pitch count this spring training.

“This is a big year for me,” the veteran right-hander said in an interview inside the Giants’ clubhouse at Scottsdale Stadium.

Verlander is sitting on 262 wins. Can he reach 300? The mark has become as rare in baseball as condor sightings in California. Randy Johnson was the last to do it, ironically for the Giants on June 4, 2009, during the first game of a rainy doubleheader at Washington’s Nationals Park.

At 45, Johnson was the 24th pitcher and sixth left-hander to reach that vaunted plateau. He finished his career with 303, and everyone wondered at the time if there would be any others.

Behind Verlander there’s no one even close: Max Scherzer at 216, Clayton Kershaw at 212 and Gerrit Cole at 153. All appear beyond their prime years of production.

“I definitely think I can do it,” Verlander said. “I need a few [good] years. I need two extremely, extremely good years, three overall. Just give me two healthy years where I make 30-plus starts a year. If I make 30-plus starts for three more years it’s definitely possible.

“Based on how I feel right now, yes.”

Verlander retooled during the winter, which used to be a time to rest his arm. He had a sore muscle behind his right shoulder in 2023, delaying his debut for the New York Mets until May 4. That injury “was totally my own fault,” he said. Last year, after being traded back to the Houston Astros, he suffered an inflamed capsule in the same shoulder and didn’t make his first start until April 19. A neck injury then wiped out most of June and all of July.

This was after Verlander missed practically two seasons—2020 and 2021—with the Astros after Tommy John surgery, sandwiched between a pair of American League Cy Young Award-winning seasons when he notched 21 wins in 2019 and 18 more in 2022. 

Last year was a lost season in Houston. He was 5-6 with a 5.48 ERA in only 17 starts and 90 1/3 innings. He knew this offseason something had to change. All the injuries, he said, were related.

“That all caught up with me,” he said. “I got to Christmas and suddenly I realized I just can’t do that anymore. If I don’t throw and it gets late in the spring like last year, I’ll just run out of time.

“So, I kept throwing all offseason. Another reason I did that was because I changed my mechanics. The neck injury last year just pointed out some flaws in my body I hadn’t been aware of. It’s not as if I’m a golfer and can take 1,000 swings a day. There’s only so many pitches you can throw.”

Over the course of his 19-year career, he’s averaged 28 starts and 178 innings a season. He’s aiming to get back to that—and so far, so good. Verlander has gone through the spring looking much like his old self, swinging his arms low in his motion before coming over the top to deliver each pitch from the windup and throwing at 95 mph. 

He’s made five spring starts, allowing no more the one earned run in any of those outings, plus striking out 15 in his 16 innings. After pitching five innings of three-hit, shutout ball against the Chicago White Sox on March 17, he left the mound to an ovation and tipped his cap to the crowd. And that was on the road at Glendale’s Camelback Ranch.

No wonder Giants manager Bob Melvin tagged Verlander as his No. 2 starter sandwiched between ace Logan Webb and Robbie Ray, a veteran left-hander who’s also trying to resurrect his career after a series of surgeries.

“He’s been fantastic,” Melvin said about Verlander earlier in the spring. “Look, a healthy Justin Verlander has shown to be very unique in what he’s done as long as he’s done it. He’s fully healthy now and we feel very good about him.”

The Giants themselves are a reclamation project under Verlander’s old friend and new president of baseball operations Buster Posey, who returned from hip surgery in 2019 and missing the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season before one last renaissance in 2021 gave his playing career a satisfactory final note.

Posey said he sees a lot of himself in Verlander.

“It was very evident after talking to him how motivated he is,” Posey said in January after signing him. “You don’t get to the level of greatness he’s accomplished in his career having just the utmost fortitude and desire to be the best.”

Which is just the type of player the Giants need right now. They finished 80-82 last season missing the playoffs for the third year in a row and seventh time in the last eight years dating back to 2016 when Posey was still their catcher and Bruce Bochy their manager. The two teamed together to win the World Series three times every even year from 2010 to 2014.

“We wouldn’t have won any of those World Series without Buster,” Bochy said this spring in an interview. “There’s no question about it.”

Verlander liked the direction of the organization and accepted its recent struggles. 

“This team has a lot of upside that is really being overlooked,” he said just after he signed. “From everything I’ve seen and heard, the culture that Buster has built is something that’s really special.”

About what’s left in his own career, Verlander added: “I’ve accomplished enough in my career. I wouldn’t be back if I didn’t think I would be great. I really think I can be back to the pitcher I was a couple of years ago when I won a Cy Young.”

The 300-win accomplishment still beckons, but it’s getting very late in the day.