How the deal went down
With the clock ticking on Aug. 31, Justin Verlander quickly had to make the biggest decision of his baseball life
On the morning of Aug. 31, the day he would make the hardest decision of his baseball life, Justin Verlander woke up not expecting anything to happen.
The face of the Detroit Tigers for more than a decade, Verlander figured he would finish his 13th major league season with the only team for which he’d ever pitched. Before the July 31 nonwaiver trade deadline, the Tigers had dealt outfielder J.D. Martinez, catcher Alex Avila and relief pitcher Justin Wilson. It seemed like any other significant moves would wait until winter.
Aug. 31 represented the final day teams could acquire players and have them eligible for inclusion on their postseason rosters. If Verlander wasn’t traded before 11 p.m. Central, he would simply finish out his season with Detroit. The rumor mill would calm until November.
Little did Verlander know that he would be pacing around his living room with less than 45 minutes to decide where he would pitch the remainder of this season and the next two. The 34-year-old righthander says he doesn’t like to make any decision rashly. This situation would render it nearly impossible not to.
“(Tigers general manager Al Avila) had talked to me a lot throughout the process, and I knew that the Astros had contacted and were probably the most serious threat,” Verlander would say a week later when recounting the frenzy of that night. “But still, it was never presented to me in a way that made me think that something was actually going to happen.
“So I just never really thought about it. That was my only way to continue to go about my job in Detroit. If I’m going to heavily think about (trade possibilities), then I’m not going to be doing my job on the mound. It was just kind of background noise until all of a sudden.”
All of a sudden, a potential Hall of Fame pitcher was tasked with a career-altering decision, one that signaled the official end of an era for the team with which he will always be synonymous and injected him into a pennant race for another, one that had the former MVP and Cy Young Award winner donning a new uniform just two days later.
Seventeen days later, Verlander will make his first home start for the Astros. Sunday afternoon’s series finale against the Seattle Mariners will be the Minute Maid Park faithful’s first opportunity to watch the man whose addition not only improved the Astros’ odds to win in the postseason but helped lift a city recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Harvey.
All because of a late-night Aug. 31 blockbuster that came down to the final seconds.
Verlander was home that day at his apartment in the Detroit suburb of Birmingham. It was a Thursday, and the Tigers were off. He had pitched the day before, throwing six innings of one-run ball at Colorado’s Coors Field, the latest outing in a resurgent second half. It would come to signify the last of his 380 regular-season starts sporting the old English D.
In the afternoon, word of a move that would set in motion the events of the evening popped on Verlander’s radar via social media. Seemingly out of nowhere, the Tigers had traded All-Star outfielder Justin Upton to the Los Angeles Angels. Verlander sent a text message to Avila, the Tigers’ GM, to gauge where things stood for him.
Talks were ongoing, he was told, but no deal was probable. So Verlander continued to go about his off day.
On the other side of the country, Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow went through countless waves of increasing optimism and growing pessimism.
By Aug. 31, he had been in the Los Angeles area for a week, unable to fly back to Houston after a series the Astros played in Anaheim the same weekend Harvey made landfall. Luhnow’s wife’s parents live in L.A., so on that Thursday morning he set up shop at the dining room table of his in-laws’ Brentwood home.
Luhnow and Avila had ongoing negotiations preceding the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline, a day after which Luhnow was widely criticized for his failure to execute a significant deal. At one point on Aug. 30, Luhnow felt pretty confident a deal for Verlander would get done. By day’s end, he considered the probability pretty low.
On the morning of the 31st, Luhnow had another deadline to tend to first. The claim the Astros had won two days earlier on Los Angeles Angels outfielder Cameron Maybin was set to expire late in the morning Pacific time, and the teams had yet to work out a deal.
With minutes remaining before the claim expired, the Angels agreed to send Maybin to the Astros as long as they took on the roughly $1.5 million left on his $9 million salary for this year.
Luhnow didn’t know at the time the Angels agreed to part with Maybin because they had acquired Upton from the Tigers, a deal that would in turn help facilitate the Verlander trade. At the time of the Astros’ Maybin acquisition, Luhnow said, he didn’t think they would land Verlander.
Luhnow’s wife, Gina, had made a dinner reservation for that evening at 8:15. With 45 minutes until the deadline, Luhnow figured, the Astros would have either made a trade or know negotiations were dead. Seesaw of emotions
“I woke up probably pretty pessimistic that anything would happen,” Luhnow said. “At one point early in the morning California time, I became much more optimistic. Then it waned again, and I became pessimistic. That cycle continued about every couple of hours, and sometimes there were just minutes between cycles. It was pretty intense.
“Knowing that the clock was ticking all along and recognizing that we had a lot of pieces to put in place even if there was agreement, it started to get pretty stressful I’d say around 6 p.m. Pacific time.”
At 6 p.m. Pacific, Luhnow oddly enough found himself at the “Bad News Bears Field” in West L.A., where he had promised his 11-year-old nephew he would watch his Little League practice. His nephew’s coach asked Luhnow to speak to the team. All the while, the GM was in the middle of negotiations for one of the biggest trades in Astros history.
“The whole thing was a little surreal,” Luhnow said. “I’m at a Little League practice with 11-year-olds, giving them a talk about how to practice. Meanwhile, this deal’s going on in the background.”
Negotiations between the Astros and Tigers had intensified in August, a month in which Verlander reeled off strong start after strong start and the first-place Astros struggled. The Detroit ace cleared trade waivers early in the month, an expected formality given the $56 million in guaranteed money he’s owed over the 2018 and 2019 seasons.
Through July, Verlander had a 4.29 ERA in 22 starts. By August’s end, he had improved it to 3.82. He had also dominated the major league-leading Los Angeles Dodgers for eight innings of one-run, two-hit ball on Aug. 20. The Astros, meanwhile, played their worst in August, an 11-17 slog on the heels of their relative inactivity — they did acquire lefthander Francisco Liriano from the Toronto Blue Jays — at the July 31 trade deadline.
In addition to the Astros and Tigers needing to find common ground on a prospect package, they had to agree on how to divvy the rest of Verlander’s contract. According to people familiar with the negotiations but not authorized to speak publicly, the Astros earlier in August offered to pay $18 million annually of the $28 million Verlander will make in 2018 and 2019. That was $2 million below Detroit’s asking price.
The Astros later conceded to palying $19 million per year. When on Aug. 31 Luhnow and Avila agreed to the prospect package the Astros would send the Tigers — highly touted 19-year-old righthander Franklin Perez, outfielder Daz Cameron and catcher Jake Rogers — Astros owner Jim Crane gave the go-ahead for the final $1 million needed to meet the Tigers’ ask.
Luhnow was back at his inlaws’ house getting ready for dinner when he and Avila agreed the deal was done. But then came the uncertainty over whether Verlander, who has full no-trade rights, would say yes. Luhnow asked his wife to push their dinner reservation to 9:00 or 9:15 p.m. Pacific.
Back in Michigan, Verlander and fiancée Kate Upton had gone for a late dinner at about 9:30 p.m. Eastern, still not expecting a trade. But as they made the roughly five-minute walk home from The Bird & The Bread restaurant at about 11:20, Verlander’s phone rang. It was Avila.
“And then I had to make the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make in baseball,” Verlander said.
Verlander’s conversation with Avila was brief. The gist: There was a deal in place, and the pitcher had to decide if he would accept. Once back at his apartment, Verlander began making calls, many of them back and forth with his agent, Mark Pieper.
“Given that period of time, I just wanted to get as much information as I could, whatever it was,” Verlander recounted in an interview with the Chronicle. “‘What are we talking about in two years? What are we talking about right now? What’s the locker room like? What are these guys like? What’s the town like? … There was just a hurricane there. Obviously, they’re in bad shape as a city. What’s that like? Can I live somewhere?’ Stuff I hadn’t even thought of. I was just trying to weigh all of that.” Keuchel weighs in
Within this short window of time, Verlander received a call from Astros ace Dallas Keuchel, who had heard the trade rumblings while back at his apartment in Houston. The Astros had landed in Houston earlier that evening after playing the last of their three “home” games against the Texas Rangers in St. Petersburg, Fla. It was their first night home since Harvey hit.
“‘Hey, I’m not trying to take too much of your time up. You won’t regret your decision to come here,’ ” Keuchel recalled this week of his message to Verlander. “‘Obviously, your window for winning in Detroit is damn near closed, and ours is wide open.’
“I figured the only thing left in his legacy is to win a World Series because he’s pretty much done everything else. I was hoping that would resonate in his mind rather quickly, and I think it did.”
Ultimately, Verlander has said, his decision came down to the opportunity to win. The Tigers’ trade of Upton earlier in the day signaled a full rebuild in Detroit. If that move doesn’t happen, the Verlander trade probably doesn’t, either.
“You’re looking at our team (in Detroit) thinking, ‘We still have a decent core of guys here. It’s not a full rebuild. Who knows what can happen with the right pieces in place?’ ” Verlander said of his mindset at the time. “And I made these comments: I said, ‘As long as I’m wearing a Tigers jersey, I plan on winning with the Tigers.’
“I was still looking at it from a very optimistic point of view of ‘We’ve got guys that if the right pieces fall into place, we can still win.’ And then when (Upton) goes, then it’s kind of like, ‘I don’t think that’s possible anymore.’ That definitely was one of the things on my mind in the decision-making.”
Verlander doesn’t remember the exact time he made the decision to accept the trade. It couldn’t have been much earlier than 11:50 p.m. Eastern, 10 minutes until the deadline, he said.
“I knew in my brain that I had all of the information. I had everything that I was going to have,” he said. “I’m not exactly sure what time it was, but it was late, and in the middle of one of my paces I look at Kate and go, ‘Screw it. We’re going to Houston.’ And she goes, ‘OK!’ and got excited. It was a pretty cool moment, really.”
Avila, who according to a Tigers spokesman wasn’t available to comment for this story, had planned ahead and sent baseball operations officials to Verlander’s apartment with the necessary paperwork for the pitcher to sign.
As part of accepting the deal, Verlander retained his full notrade rights and also asked the Astros to void the $22 million option for 2020 that would have vested if he finished among the top five in AL Cy Young Award voting in 2019. Verlander, who continues to defy the aging curve, viewed it as essentially a club option. If he places in the top five, he will be worth much more than $22 million on the open market in the 2019-20 offseason.
Once that was hashed out, Verlander signed, and a photo of the document was emailed to the MLB commissioner’s office for approval.
“I don’t know how this would’ve worked before cellphones,” Verlander said.
The trade required MLB approval because of the money changing hands between the teams. When midnight Eastern time hit, Luhnow was in the dark as to whether the deal had actually gone through in time. It was out of his hands at that point. There was nothing more he could do.
On his and his wife’s 10-minute drive to dinner, Luhnow sat in the passenger’s seat in the hopes he would receive a franchise-altering phone call from MLB. At about 9:15 p.m. Pacific, 15 minutes after the deadline, it came. The deal was done.
After he hung up with the commissioner’s office, Luhnow sent word to Crane and then to Astros manager A.J. Hinch, who was on the back patio of his home in The Woodlands catching up with his wife, Erin, after a hectic week. Hinch texted his coaches. Already asleep by then, Astros pitching coach Brent Strom awoke to the news in the middle of the night.
At last, Luhnow sat down at The Brentwood Restaurant & Lounge feeling like he “just went through a traumatic experience.” He ordered a cocktail — Tito’s and soda with a lime — to unwind and celebrate.
“It tasted great,” he said. jake.kaplan@chron.com twitter.com/jakemkaplan