Dejection, ejection mark Verlander’s night

Odd, unexpected drubbing puts quest for 200 on hold

You hear it all the time if you really love and follow baseball.

One of the best things about the grand old game — which supposedly never changes and is much too slow — is that you can come to the ballpark and see something you’ve never seen before.

Walking into Minute Maid Park on Thursday afternoon — the Astros back home after a resilient, gritty road trip; the second-best team in the sport trying to keep Boston in sight and lock down the American League West — I figured there was a good chance I would be writing about the 200th victory of Justin Verlander’s increasingly Hall of Fame-worthy career.

Yeah … no.

It ended up as the worst start of Verlander’s

Astros career. And it barely even got started.

“I was listening to the TV broadcast down in the tunnel. I was looking at the video, and somebody said somebody was ejected,” said a still-confused Verlander after the Astros fell 8-6 to the Seattle Mariners. “And I didn't see A.J. (Hinch) coming down, so I went up to A.J., and I was like, ‘Hey, who got thrown out?’ And he said, ‘You.’ ”

InThe man who arrived after a hurricane, then pitched the Astros all the way to their first World Series championship, was torched in the first inning and hammered in the second by Seattle. Mitch Haniger began it all by crushing a 405-foot leadoff home run to deep left-center field. The Mariners hit for a team cycle (long ball, stand-up triple, ground-rule double and sharp single) before the top of the first was complete, then led 6-0 before the third had even arrived.

And that’s when an already odd night at the ballpark become

instantly memorable (in a very weird way).

It was announced in the press box that Verlander — September and October hero in 2017; strong Cy Young candidate this season — had been ejected before the third inning began.

“I said something and turned my back immediately. I wanted to let him know that I thought he was wrong, and I turned my back immediately so that it wasn't confrontational,” said Verlander, who was tossed by home plate umpire Nic Lentz.

Verlander’s upside-down line: two innings, seven hits, six earned runs, three home runs and a balk (that initially was called a baserunning out via a pickoff ).

“It’s baseball. Things happen,” he said. “They put some good swings on some pitches, and I didn’t make some good pitches.”

Brad Peacock suddenly took over as Verlander officially disappeared, a half inning after Hinch had argued with an umpire for more than 30 seconds.

“My interpretation of the rule was always like, just step back

toward second, which I did,” said Verlander, who only became more convinced after watching a video replay of the second-inning balk call that he had done nothing wrong. “I'm not Gumby. I can't — I don't know how to turn my body much more than that on an inside move, to step any further toward second . ... I don't know how that's even his call.”

It was easily the worst outing of Verlander’s time in orange and blue, which had otherwise been mostly heroic since he was traded to the Astros at the last minute on Aug. 31, 2017. Classic off night in August? Squeezed and wronged? Either way, the Astros’ most dependable and trusted arm was ultimately off-target Thursday. And if you happened to leave your seat for a few minutes — or changed channels to check in on Deshaun Watson, Bill O’Brien and the preseason Texans — you would have returned wondering where in the world No. 35 was.

“I probably would have gotten a better explanation of what happened had I known I was

ejected,” Verlander said.

Denard Span and Jean Segura added homers. Seattle, which entered the evening having dropped seven of its last 10 contests and fading in the West, created an instant spark against the Astros’ ace and was engaged in joyous dugout handslapping before he departed.

Pitchers get hammered and yanked across the majors on a nightly basis. But Verlander, lit up and ejected at home, the outing after striking out 14 Dodgers during the Astros’ triumphant return to Los Angeles?

Very odd and highly unexpected.

Entering Thursday, Verlander had been even better than the Astros had hoped when general manager Jeff Luhnow made a franchise-changing move last August. A 20-7 combined record in the regular and postseason, highlighted by a sparkling 2.02 ERA, a minuscule 0.83 WHIP and 285 strikeouts in 227 innings (35 games).

“Obviously, you acquire a Cy Young, MVP, All-Star, you expect that person to perform

on your team — especially if you give up four prospects for him,” Luhnow said. “That being said, he has exceeded my very high expectations. Not only the way he came in and performed right away in September and in the postseason, but the way he's kept that up throughout the year and he's been so consistent. Every time he’s on the mound, I feel like we’re going to win the game, and more often than not we do.”

Verlander wasn’t around for the end Thursday. By the sixth, it was 8-2 Seattle.

Start No. 410 of his 14-year career could have ended with win No. 200 in downtown Houston. Instead, it was two innings, six runs, three homers, a questionable balk and a sudden ejection.

Weird and odd. Something we hadn’t seen before and definitely weren’t expecting.

Verlander still searching for answers after it was all over.