Until he finally retires, it’s hard to go through an offseason without considering long-time ace and future Hall of Famer, Justin Verlander in free agency. Based on the pitching additions by the Tigers already, it’s hard to envision a role for Verlander in 2026. Still, I can’t resist considering the idea anyway, if only as a backup plan should a preseason injury ding the current starting rotation.
The Tigers’ rotation depth looks fairly solid as things stand, and it would be hard to do much better without either signing a top shelf starter or having a top pitching prospect on the cusp of the major leagues. But there are still plenty of question marks. There’s nothing unusual about that, of course. Having prime Verlander, Max Scherzer, Anibal, Sanchez, Doug Fister, and Rick Porcello is an incredibly rare set of circumstances, and we probably won’t ever see a rotation that good and that deep again. But maybe, just maybe, the Tigers have one more move in them if the price is right.
We can hope that someone like Framber Valdez or Ranger Suarez just doesn’t get the deal they’re looking for and become available on a one year deal as spring camp approaches. We’ve written them both up already, so for a moment while the offseason is pretty dead, let’s consider the status of the greatest pitcher of his generation as Verlander waits for offers after a fairly good season with the San Francisco Giants in 2025.
Verlander’s 2025 season proceeded along the lines of a common pattern in his career, though certainly not at the same lofty level. Long-time Tigers fans will recall that early in his career, Verlander was notorious for getting off to a sluggish start over the first 5-6 weeks of a season, and then getting stronger and stronger through the end of the regular season. He repeated that pattern again in 2017, the year Al Avila dealt him to the Houston Astros, ending a very good era of Detroit Tigers baseball.
Last year he got off to a rough start in March and April for the San Francisco Giants, posting a 4.70 ERA. May and June were better, though his peripherals didn’t agree, until a pretty brutal July scuttled his value heading into the trade deadline. In comparing him to Charlie Morton at the time, who looked to me like better option of the two, Verlander looked like he might finally be out of gas. Despite pitching his home games in Oracle Park, a pretty good spot for a fly ball pitcher, hitters were finally starting to tee off on him for too many home runs. The whole slate of potential postseason contending teams apparently agreed as he stayed put to finish the season in San Francisco. Meanwhile, Morton was a disaster with the Tigers. Turns out we were all wrong.
From the All-Star break to the end of the year, encompassing 75 1/3 innings, or half his season total, Verlander stormed back to post a 2.99 ERA the rest of the way. As a huge Verlander fan, my lack of faith pains me. Watching him stabilize a badly depleted rotation and pitch for the Tigers in the postseason again would have been a pretty incredible story no matter how it ended.
In the first half, Verlander’s strikeout rate was 19.9 percent. From the All-Star break on it was 21.5 percent. A 7.7 percent walk rate in the first half was followed by a 8.0 percent mark. So nothing crazy happened. He just did a better job limiting home runs. His HR/9 mark dropped from 1.27 in the first half to 0.72 in the second half, so let’s try and unpack that to see if anything really changed that could account for that drop in home runs allowed.
The first thing to note is the development of a sweeper early in the season that in the second half became a bigger part of Verlander’s repertoire. He trimmed his fastball and slider usage both by a little bit, replacing them with more curveballs and sweepers. He also made some tweaks by moving over to the third base side of the rubber against right-handed hitters, and spoke of trying to find a little more deception and hide the ball a little better out of the glove in his motion. Subtle changes like those don’t typically result in a big bump in strikeout rate, but in combination they can sometimes be enough to keep hitters off balance and significantly cut down the amount of home runs allowed.
Verlander’s fastball velocity was up a little bit, averaging 93.9 mph after averaging 93.5 mph in 2024. That tracks with the fact that other than a short IL stint for a pectoral muscle strain, Verlander was healthy enough to make 29 starts and throw 152 innings after dealing with multiple minor injuries with Houston in 2024. However, the fastball was less effective than it’s ever been, at least in the first half of the season.
Back in 2018-2019, Verlander was still averaging over 20 inches of induced vertical break on his fourseamer, which is elite territory. Post Tommy John surgery, he’s averaged more like 19 inches, and in 2025 that number dipped just a bit more to an average of 18.6 inches. That number was consistent throughout the season, so he didn’t just rediscover more vertical movement. The only thing I can see to explain Verlander getting more pop-ups and weak contact in the air after the All-Star break was the fact that he started pitching even more to the top of the zone, while throwing a few less fastballs and more of his curve and sweeper.
The sweeper averaged 80-81 mph with a little more gloveside tilt that the 12-6 curveball, and that little extra velocity probably makes it the better option. You don’t see too many highly effective curveballs in the 77-79 mph range these days. So it will be interesting to see if he continues to lean into the sweeper more after increasing its usage throughout the 2025 season.
A bit less predictability is usually a good thing, but at this point the old dog probably isn’t going to learn any major new tricks. I wouldn’t imagine he’ll be adding a splitter to his arsenal at this point in his career, for example, though that pitch, if he could come up with a good one, would certainly change the equation.
All in all, Verlander still looks like a somewhat above average major league pitcher. He posted a 3.85 ERA/3.85 FIP combination in 2025 with very even splits. The slider is still very good, the fastball remains close to an average pitch, and the more vertical breaking balls, the curve and the sweeper, are solid change of pace pitches, particularly when he uses the fourseamer up more often.
One thing that intrigues me about a pitcher like Verlander is the fact that the corners of the strike zone produce the least called strikes of any part of the strike zone. The ABS challenge system may give those corners back to pitchers who can hit them effectively, and Verlander certainly still has the command to take some advantage of that, particularly by using those upper corners with the fourseamer and then throwing the breaking balls off similar start lines out of his hand.
JV has always pounded the top of the zone with fourseamers, but with the Giants he also started to show more willingness to drop a sweeper or a curveball in at the top of the zone as well. That’s a pitch that has become less common over the last few decades, but with the ability to challenge calls, I suspect we’ll see more pitchers like Verlander, who spin the ball really well and feature riding fourseamers and curveballs or sweepers with a lot of depth, trying to take advantage and lock hitters up with breaking balls starting head high and then dropping into the zone.
More of that would also play against the trends in hitting over the last decade. As players have recognized the need to match the plane of the pitch with their swing to maximize hard fly ball contact for extra base hits and home runs, more and more players have learned to hunt pitches at hip height down to the bottom of the zone, stay back, and launch them in the air for damage. It’s a lot harder for those hitters to get in position to hit pitches at the top of the zone hard in the air. There just isn’t much room for error on a high pitch to get the barrel down below the line of the pitch and still get back to it on the upswing. Most, though not all, of the top home run hitters in the game these days pop the ball up a lot when they chase those top rail pitches.
For now, this is all just my pet theory. Maybe the challenge system won’t affect things that much. It’s certainly not enough to bet on Verlander having better years ahead than his last few. It’s just something I’ll be curious to see play out in the new ABS era. For now, it’s probably best to consider Verlander as likely to put up an ERA between 3.80-4.30, but asking for more is probably greedy at this point in his career.
The problem with signing Verlander is of course that the Tigers don’t really need another mid-rotation type arm. Sure, Verlander might be as good as anyone else on their staff not named Skubal. He would bring a wealth of experience that could benefit his younger teammates. And seeing him in a Tigers’ uniform again would be fun. Would I have preferred him to Drew Anderson? Yes, but here we are. The fit just isn’t there right now.
If they were getting someone really good, like a Framber Valdez or Ranger Suarez, that might be one thing. But with Tarik Skubal, Casey Mize, Jack Flaherty, Reese Olson, and Troy Melton, plus Anderson already signed with at least a promise of being allowed to try and make the rotation out of spring camp, the Tigers don’t really have a lot of room for another starting pitcher that doesn’t have an option. At the same time, Olson’s durability can’t be trusted, Anderson is a complete wild card, and Melton will be in his first season in the major leagues. It’s not exactly a slam dunk rotation behind Skubal.
Signing Justin Verlander for one last tour in the Olde English D doesn’t appear to be in the cards at this point. It’s still fun to think about and maybe, just maybe, not out of the realm of possibility depending on how Verlander’s free agent status and the Tigers’ needs play out over the next month or two. An injury in the rotation as pitchers start building up their workloads toward the beginning of camp could change the equation, but unless that happens, we’ll assume their starting rotation is set for 2026.
