According To Statcast, Justin Verlander's 39 Year Old Fastball Somehow Got Better *AFTER* Tommy John Surgery
Two completely different animals take the mound tomorrow night in what promises to be an electric start to the World Series. We get in-depth today on what makes this animals tick but for now I want to focus on yet another insane fact about 39 Year Old Justin Verlander:
MLB.com - This postseason velo from Verlander comes following a regular season in which he averaged 95 mph on the dot, even faster than he was throwing before the Tommy John surgery -- Verlander's four-seamer averaged 94.6 mph in his previous full season, 2019.
39.
Off TJ.
Pumping fuckin CHED.
The good stuff.
The statcast fella from MLB put together a robust analysis on Verlander's velocity and turns out he's the biggest freak since they started keeping the data. There's no age-based velocity metric that Justin Verlander doesn't completely dominate. Some really impressive stuff in there if you want to peruse. Most of it will only deepen your appreciation for him.
For now I want to go back to the matchup of him vs. Nola. They're both outstanding but in completely different ways.
Nola moves the ball around the strike zone. He's got a nasty two seamer that runs in to righties. He started throwing a cutter this year that does the complete opposite. Then he's got a great change and CB combo that he throws in any count. He's weak-contact first. Then with two-strikes he'll expand the zone.
Verlander on the other hand just comes right at you the second you get in the box. Heavy 4-seam fastballs up and down. He'll pitch backwards some times but the breaking stuff you see early is more of a tease than what you get with 2-strikes. It's all power, all the time. You can hear his fastball from the parking lot. He wants to punch out double digits every time on the mound and physically impose himself on an opposing lineup.
Nola used to be a lot more contact-driven but that's been curbed more with the use of his cut fastball. The result is 235 strikeouts to 29 walks across 205 innings. Utterly preposterous ratio leading to a 2.58, which is a lot more impressive than the 3.25 ERA suggests. Like most pitchers, there's some clunkers in his 2022 Game Logs. But nothing that jumps out negatively. If anything his last regular season start should be encouraging to Phillies fans:
That was 3 weeks ago in Houston against the Astros.
Question I'm wondering is if that benefits Nola or the Astros more? He's seen the success he can have but same time the Astros got experience facing him. Personally I would lean more towards the pitcher if it was any other team, but we're talking about the Astros. I'm not betting against their computers.
It should be the best World Series since 2016. A lot of people think 2019 was good but most of those games were blowouts. More on that later.
For now, go check out Starting 9 and start getting dialed in for the Series