Rotation minus Verlander adds to Astros’ woes
Losing ace another major blow for team trying to overcome sign-stealing scandal
A.J. Hinch and Jeff Luhnow were fired.
Gerrit Cole signed with the New York Yankees after Houston’s Major League Baseball team could not afford to keep him.
Justin Verlander is on the injured list with a right forearm strain, just three games into an unprecedented 60-game season.
What in the heck has happened to the Astros?
The 2020 version isn’t the same team you fell back in love with during 2015 and cheered with fiercely loyal pride through Game 7 of the 2019 World Series. Not even close.
And that’s without mentioning a sign-stealing scandal that attached an unavoidable asterisk to the franchise’s only world championship.
Last week, it was smart to say the Astros had received a reprieve from all the bitter, nasty national hate since booing fans wouldn’t be allowed to enter stadiums across the country because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Sunday, the Astros fell 7-6 to a bad Seattle Mariners team in a messy game at Minute Maid Park, and breaking news during the contest was the real disaster.
At best, Verlander misses a couple weeks and is re-evaluated, new manager Dusty Baker said.
At worst, the 37-year-old righthander misses the remainder of the season. Which would mean the Astros’ national redemption tour is already down to its final breaths and an unpredictable Zack Greinke — the 36-year-old allowed four hits, three runs and walked two in just 31⁄3 innings Sunday — is the best starting pitcher left on the active roster.
Verlander said postgame that he hopes to return at some point this season.
“There is a forearm strain. I’m hopeful that with some rest it will heal, and I’ll be able to return soon. Thank you for all the well wishes,” tweeted Verlander, who won the 2019 American League Cy Young award and should have won the 2018 honor.
Even during the most abnormal season in MLB history, it’s far too early to say the Astros won’t be alive in October. More than half of the teams in the league will make the playoffs this season, thanks to commissioner Rob Manfred, which means the team that won a franchise-record 107 games last season definitely still has a shot to make the postseason in 2020.
But are the Astros winning the World Series this year without a healthy, normal Verlander in October?
That is almost impossible to imagine.
He is their ace.
Let me change that. He is their ACE.
Especially without Cole. Especially with now No. 2 starter Lance McCullers Jr. coming off Tommy John surgery and the back end of the rotation living life as a daily question mark.
Charlie Morton pitches for Tampa Bay. Dallas Keuchel takes the mound for the Chicago
White Sox.
Remember when the goldenera Astros had too many starting pitchers?
This 60-game season was supposed to represent wild chaos and random uncertainty. But not this kind of chaos and uncertainty.
These Astros can still crack wood — they totaled nine hits Sunday and have scored 21 runs through three games — and have the depth to temporarily withstand the loss of one of their biggest names.
But this isn’t losing Carlos Correa or George Springer for a while or having to briefly replace an injured Jose Altuve in the lineup. This is losing Verlander just seven months after Cole was promised $324 million if he started proudly wearing
Yankees pinstripes.
On every level — statistically, factually, theoretically — Verlander can’t be replaced. If he doesn’t pitch another game for the Astros in 2020, Game 7 of the ’19 World Series could soon become a more favorable local memory.
The painful, stinging kicker: Hinch isn’t around to fix all this.
The previous skipper always said the right stuff after Springer, Correa, Altuve, McCullers and so many more went down from 2015-19. His Astros always responded within the lines, winning 311 combined games the previous three seasons and twice reaching the Fall Classic.
Baker is still feeling and figuring everything out. He was also hired on a feel-it-out, shortterm deal and has been paired with a first-time general manager James Click. Now, Baker must keep winning games without a future Hall of Famer, the season after the Astros were shredded in the national crosshairs.
Verlander has often and proudly spoken of his desire to play until he’s 45. Nolan Ryan was his childhood baseball idol. The Astros’ power righthander holds a 226-129 career mark with a 3.33 ERA, 1.13 WHIP and 3,013 strikeouts.
Verlander has been on the verge of becoming MLB’s version of Tom Brady and last season was one of the best of No. 35’s 16-year career: 21-6, 2.58 ERA, 0.80 WHIP, 300 strikeouts in 223 innings, nohitter.
This season was already going to define the Astros’ future.
Now it could define Verlander’s in orange and blue. And the remainder of his baseball career.