Verlander Excited To Make His First Start Of The Season Saturday
By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak
DETROIT - The individual season of Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Justin Verlander begins Saturday, when the 2011 Cy Young Award winner and MVP will make his first start of the year after missing two months because of a triceps strain.
Verlander had been pleased with his progress in spring training before he suffered the injury, and while he might not be at that level now, his second rehab start has him convinced he is going in the right direction.
"I don't know if it's completely realistic to be right back there yet with only two rehab starts," Verlander said Wednesday. "That's something that kind of takes its time to build itself back up, but to be back out there, obviously I feel like the stuff is plenty good in my last rehab start to pitch at this level."
Even as a veteran, Verlander will have a few butterflies Saturday, but he does not expect those to be any kind of factor.
"I wouldn't suspect [it would] be anything I haven't dealt with before," Verlander said. "I've pitched in some pretty big ball games. Obviously you're going to have some nerves going out there for the first time in a big-league game, but I've dealt with that for many years."
Tigers manager Brad Ausmus said Tuesday that the team does not have a hard pitch limit for Verlander but noted he could probably go at least 93 pitches. Verlander indicated he plans to pitch as long as he is doing well.
"I'm not setting any specific innings or anything like that," Verlander said. "I'll go as long as I can until they take the ball out of my hand."
Verlander had one of the worst seasons of his career in 2014. He allowed more earned runs than any other American League pitcher. The struggles have many believing Verlander's career is on a steep downhill slide. The pitcher, as one would expect, disagrees about that.
"I think there were a lot of factors that went into last year and the performance," Verlander said. "Not making any excuses - I didn't pitch as well as anybody would have liked, including myself, but I definitely feel like I can pitch a lot better than that. We'll see."
