Verlander ‘feeling great’ during recovery
Ace throwing from 90 feet, unsure if he’ll be able to pitch this season
Astros ace Justin Verlander said his rehab from Tommy John surgery is going smoothly, and he has no plans to stop pitching anytime soon.
“I’m nowhere close to the finish line yet,” Verlander said Friday in his first media availability since opening day of the 2020 season, which was the last game he pitched before undergoing surgery on his right elbow in September.
Verlander resumed throwing in March, five months after surgery. He said Friday he is throwing at 90 feet (only fastballs, no off-speed pitches) and “feeling great.”
At 38, he is among the oldest major league pitchers to have Tommy John surgery, which typically requires a 12-14 month recovery period.
“Age is just a number. I think I still recover just as well as I ever have,” he said. “I’m hitting all the check marks that you’re supposed to hit. They give the same protocols to me that they’re giving to the 22-year-olds, you know, so I feel like my body is still in great shape. My ability to recover is still there. I don’t know if that lasts forever. I don’t know. I know I’m raging against the dying of the light, I’ll tell you that. But I’m doing everything I possibly can to keep it that way.”
While Verlander didn’t rule out returning this season, his last under contract with the Astros, he sees it as a long shot. If he does play this season, he said, it would not be as a starter.
“Do I want to pitch? Absolutely. But there’s a lot of a lot of room to go,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that need to go perfect from now till then for that to even be a discussion. … I really hope that my teammates put me in a position to make that decision. I hope these guys continue to play great baseball and and win baseball games and go out there and play deep into October. And that would be very difficult for me to not join them.”
As far as his future with the Astros, Verlander said, “There’s really been no conversations about anything moving forward. I don’t know why there would be at this point. I mean, I think anybody would like to see how my rehab continues to go further down the line. You know, I think I would have to prove that I’m healthy before that was even a topic of conversation.”
Verlander spends each morning in the gym and physical therapy room before spending afternoons with his family. As his 2year-old daughter, Genevieve, giggled in the background, Verlander described a “silver lining” of getting to spend more time with his family during recovery.
“I love the game of baseball, I still have so much passion for it and right now, I’m still playing until the wheels fall off,” he said. “But this time that I’ll never get back has completely changed my perspective of things.”