Why Justin Verlander rebuilt his mechanics after a Cy Young Award-winning season

When MLB shut down in March because of the pandemic, Justin Verlander hit the reset button.

The Astros 37-year-old ace and reigning AL Cy Young Award winner was already poised to miss time because of a lat strain. Five days into the sport’s hiatus, he underwent surgery on his groin. When surgeon William Meyers told him post-operation that his groin looked as if it had been in bad shape for a while, a lightbulb went off in Verlander’s head.

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At that point, it was relatively clear that the spread of COVID-19 in the United States would prevent the MLB season from beginning any time soon. Verlander viewed the unexpected downtime as a chance to improve. Once he progressed in his rehab to the point where he could resume throwing, he launched into what he described as “a full rebuild process” with his mechanics.

“I kind of went down the rabbit hole,” he said.

Despite all his success last season, Verlander’s goal at the end of the year was to get his mechanics back to what they had been in the past and regain some of the velocity he lost. The realization in March that his groin had been unhealthy offered clarity and a new starting point. In 2019, he said, his body was extremely arched and upright when he released the ball, which led to a much higher release point than years past.

If he planned on playing only a couple more years, Verlander thinks he could’ve stuck with his 2019 mechanics and withstood the strain they put on his body. But that, of course, has never been his plan. He set out to fix the issue. “It was almost like plugging holes in a roof when it’s raining,” he said. “I would fix one thing and another thing would pop up.” On Thursday, he pitched three no-hit innings on 43 pitches in an intrasquad game at Minute Maid Park. As he spoke to reporters on a Zoom call shortly afterward, he described the outing as a culmination of a two-to-three month process. He also noted that his mechanics aren’t exactly where he wants them yet, but they are close.

“I changed a lot of stuff that some people would think was unnecessary,” he said. “But I thought it was necessary, especially if I want to play eight, 10 more years.”

Verlander threw a major league-leading 223 innings in the 2019 regular season plus 35 1/3 more in the postseason. He hasn’t been on the Injured List since 2015, but his average fastball velocity did dip last year; according to Statcast, he averaged 94.6 mph, which was slower than 2018 (95.0) and 2017 (95.3). As for how long his groin bothered him, Verlander said he dealt with mild groin issues for a couple years but nothing that ever prevented him from pitching.

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“And last year particularly, I never had any acute events. I didn’t have any strains or anything,” he said. “But as I’ve learned with my other core surgery (in 2014), it doesn’t necessarily have to be hurting for there to be a problem. That’s where the lightbulb went off after I had surgery and Dr. Meyers said that the tissue looked like it was really beat up and it had been so for a little bit. That’s just one of those things that the body subconsciously adjusts for. It couldn’t do what I wanted to or it wouldn’t allow me to do what I used to because it probably would’ve pulled or torn completely. Your body subscionsly knows that stuff and just won’t allow you to do it. And thus why my mechanics had started to change.

“I knew my mechanics were very different. I could see that. But I was also having a great deal of success. It took me three months to really get to where I’m at now. I couldn’t do that in season. You’ve just got to ride with what you’ve got in season. … But when I had the opportunity to get healthy again and when this thing happened and we got shut down, it was like, ‘OK, what can I do to get myself back to where I want to be?’ ”

The Astros are relying this season on Verlander and Zack Greinke, 36, for bulk innings and elite performance in their combined 24 starts, which equates to 40 percent of the 60-game schedule. Lance McCullers Jr. is entrenched as the team’s No. 3, but the Astros might have to mix and match in the Nos. 4 and 5 spots throughout the season and see who emerges.

At the end of the first iteration of spring training, José Urquidy and Josh James were penciled into the back end of the rotation. But neither has been in camp yet, Urquidy for an undisclosed reason and James for a personal matter. It’s unclear when they will report or whether they will have enough time to be rotation-ready by the end of the month.

Beyond Urquidy and James, the Astros have Austin Pruitt and Framber Valdez as options to step in and make starts. If the season had started in late March under normal circumstances, one of them might’ve had to slide into the rotation because of the void created by Verlander’s injuries. Even if Verlander hadn’t had the groin issue, he was likely to begin the season on the IL because of the lat strain he sustained in early March.

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After Thursday’s outing, Verlander reported feeling “fantastic” and said that he didn’t experience any problems with his lat or groin. The instrasquad start put him on an every-fifth-day routine for Opening Day on July 24. The calendar allows for him to simulate two more starts before he faces off against the Mariners.

“He takes great care of his body,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said. “He’s extremely strong, extremely agile and age is no factor. You can’t tell how old Verlander is. Everybody talks about how when you get to a certain age you’re going downhill. But this guy, he’s a testament to hard work.”

(Photo: David J. Phillip / AP Photo)