All-Star reunion in D.C.
Competitive Scherzer, Verlander dominant
WASHINGTON – They have everything you’d possibly want in life.
They have more than $400 million in guaranteed contracts, the kind of money that will take care of generations of their families long after they’re gone. They have exquisite homes in California and Florida, beautiful wives, fancy cars, one baby born, another on the way, and a bevy of honors and awards that are the envy of every pitcher in baseball.
They have 13 All-Star Game appearances, four Cy Young awards, one MVP award and a World Series ring between them.
Yet to All-Stars Max Scherzer of the Nationals and Justin Verlander of the Astros, it’s not enough.
Scherzer, 33, craves the World Series ring that Verlander collected last year with Houston and hopes to one day surpass him in every statistical category. Verlander has the career edge with a 197-119 record, 2,588 strikeouts and seven 200-strikeout seasons, compared with Scherzer’s 153-80 record with 2,331 strikeouts and six 200-strikeout seasons.
Verlander, 35, craves the chance to win at least one more Cy Young award
to go along with two runner-up finishes and perhaps even catch Scherzer, who has three Cy Young awards and is on his way to a fourth.
They used to work together in Detroit, pitching on the same Tigers staff for five years. But since going their separate ways, they rarely stay in touch. Nothing personal, they say, just different lifestyles.
Scherzer, who has been married for nearly five years to Erica May, a former competitive ballroom dancer and college softball player, moved a year ago from Scottsdale, Arizona, to Palm Beach, Florida, with their baby daughter.
Verlander got married in November to model Kate Upton, with a home now in Beverly Hills, California, and announced Saturday that they are expecting their first child.
“They’re just so different, especially on days they pitch,” says Angels second baseman Ian Kinsler, their former teammate in Detroit. “Max walks in and eats this huge, huge sandwich before he pitches. It’s like a huge grinder. Whatever he can possibly find in the kitchen, he throws in between two slices of bread, and then he talks all day.
“Justin has got this whole skit, from the time he arrives to the ballpark to the car he drives, to the clothes he wears to the music he listens to. Everything is a skit on the day he pitches.
“Max will joke around with guys on the day he pitches and you really don’t see him get serious until about an hour before game time. Justin won’t say a word to anyone except to his catcher.”
Now, for the first time since Scherzer departed Detroit as a free agent after the 2014 season, they will be reunited at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game, with banners of the two, side-by-side, hanging off the light poles on the streets by Nationals Park.
It’ll be the first time they’ve been All-Stars together at the same game since 2013.
Scherzer is 62-30 with a 2.94 ERA since signing a six-year,
$210 million contract with the Nationals. He should be the first reigning Cy Young winner to ever start the All-Star Game in his home ballpark. He is a league-leading 12-5 with a 2.41 ERA while also leading the league with 182 strikeouts and a
.180 opposing batting average. Verlander pitched Sunday for the Astros and ruled himself ineligible for the All-Star Game. He ceded the American League ERA lead to Boston’s Chris Sale but was at times the league’s most dominant first-half starter.
It’s a shame they’re not starting against each other, because as different as they are, and as opposite as they behave on the day they pitch, they share a characteristic that might bring them together again one day at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
“That competitiveness is probably the only similarity between them that makes them so good,” says the Diamondbacks’ Alex Avila, their former catcher in Detroit. “They strive for absolute perfection. And they’re so competitive that they not only want to beat you, but to embarrass you.”
Oh, they’ve certainly provided humiliating moments to plenty of teams along the way. Verlander and Scherzer have two no-hitters apiece, and each can claim a major league-record-tying 20-strikeout game.
Scherzer, one of six pitchers to win the Cy Young award in both leagues, has been so dominant he’s on pace to become the first right-handed starter to pitch at least 200 innings with a WHIP (walks and hits per inning) below 1.00 in four consecutive seasons since Walter Johnson from 1912 to 1915. He actually has a higher on-base percentage (.289) as a hitter than the .244 OPS he’s yielding as a pitcher.
“He’s come over from the American League, put a bat in his hands, and look what he’s done,” said Cardinals pitching coach Mike Maddux, Scherzer’s former pitching coach in Washington. “That’s Mad Max.
“This is a guy that’s not content unless he wins everything. That’s what separates him. He demands great things for himself. He’s tickled pink that he’s one of the best in the game, but why be content with that if you can bust your tail and have people say, ‘You are the best.’
“That’s the driving force. He’s embarrassed any time he pitches below the standard he set for himself.”
It’s no different for Verlander, who gets upset with himself, Avila says, every time he doesn’t throw a no-hitter.
And, oh yes, they can carry grudges.
Scherzer will never forget that the Diamondbacks believed he’d break down and traded him to the Tigers; his hometown St. Louis team, the Cardinals, passed on him in free agency.
Verlander has his own revenge tour going. He vividly remembers everyone who passed on him at last year’s trade deadline. He wanted to go to the Dodgers or the Yankees and had the Cubs high on his list. None of the high-powered teams bothered to even claim him on waivers and refused to give up prospects for him in August.
Verlander not only led the Astros past the Dodgers in the World Series title but again is a Cy Young candidate.
You think the Yankees, Cubs and Dodgers would all like a redo on their decision of a year ago?
“He’s very aware of all of that,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch says. “Trust me, he knows.”
The biggest regret the two of them share is that they never won a ring together in Detroit. They went to the playoffs four consecutive years and won the American League pennant in 2012 but never came away with the big prize.
To this day, they are haunted by the 2013 AL Championship Series where they had the Red Sox on the ropes, with a 1-0 series lead and a 5-0 Game 2 lead with Scherzer striking out 13 batters in seven innings, only for David Ortiz to hit a grand slam in the eighth inning that changed the entire fate of the series. The Red Sox went on to win the World Series over the Cardinals.
It could have been Detroit. “That’s the one,” says Red Sox GM David Dombrowski, who was with the Tigers, “we all think about. We were so close to getting it done in Detroit. That’s why we were all pulling for Justin last year, seeing him win one after all he did for us.
“Those were special times having two of the best given guys in baseball pitch every five days. They were so talented and driven. I think they would have had the same success if they weren’t together, but they really fed off each other.
“It wouldn’t surprise me to see them cap their careers in Cooperstown one day.”
Says Cubs All-Star lefty Jon Lester: “These two guys are the best of my generation, for sure.”
For those who had the chance to play alongside the two of them in Detroit, they’ll tell you those memories will never fade.
“It was awesome,” former Tigers center fielder Austin Jackson said. “Every time they took the ball, you knew they were going to control the game. Always.
“The funniest thing was watching (former manager Jim) Leyland come to the mound and take the ball from their hands. You know neither wanted to come out. So you can’t wait to find out, ‘ What’s Scherzer going to say? What’s Verlander going to say?’ “Those were the days.” Now, here they are back together, in the same city, representing different teams and leagues with the same aspirations.
“When you look at those guys, it’s like facing Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine back in the day, or Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling,” says Angels slugger Albert Pujols, a future Hall of Famer. “People don’t realize how special they are.
“Hopefully, now that they’re in the same All-Star Game together, people can be reminded how special it is what they’ve done.”