To his credit, Justin Verlander posted a 2.99 ERA over 14 second-half starts for the San Francisco Giants, assuring that the three-time All-Star will have an opportunity to pitch for a 21st season. <\/p>\n
The problem is the 42-year-old went 0-7 with a 4.70 ERA in the first half of the season. That came after he posted a 5.48 ERA over 17 starts during an injury-riddled campaign with the Houston Astros in 2024. <\/p>\n
As cool as it would be for Verlander’s second half of the season to be a sign of him finding one more great run that allows him to get to 300 career wins\u2014he leads all active starters with 266 victories\u2014it just seems more likely it’s his last great act. He’s going to turn 43 in February, and he has logged more than 3,500 regular-season innings in his career. It’s an annoying cliche, but Father Time is undefeated. <\/p>\n
Still, Verlander signed for $15 million this past season, and considering how he pitched in the second half of the campaign, he certainly won’t pitch for any less than that in 2026. Heck, the former AL MVP might insist on more. <\/p>\n
The same can likely be said for his for his former teammate, Max Scherzer, who has struggled to stay healthy the past two years, but pitched well for the Toronto Blue Jays in the postseason. With both, you pay a premium for a future Hall of Famer, even if they’re no longer at the height of their powers. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To his credit, Justin Verlander posted a 2.99 ERA over 14 second-half starts for the San Francisco Giants,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-303740","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}