The Giants Are Coming in for a Verlanding

What does it cost to sign a living legend? About $15 million, it turns out. Three-time Cy Young winner Justin Verlander is taking his talents to the West Coast for the first time, having inked a one-year deal with the San Francisco Giants for that aforementioned sum.

It’s another bold signing for newly appointed supreme prefect of baseball operations Gerald D. “Buster” Posey, who officially took charge a little over three months ago. And yet — if we give Posey the credit he’s reportedly due for the Matt Chapman extension — more than a quarter of San Francisco’s payroll (according to CBT math) is now devoted to players Posey is responsible for signing.

But Verlander could very well have cost more. He made nearly three times as much last season, and had he hit the 140-inning threshold in 2024, he would’ve been able to activate a player option worth $35 million, not $15 million. So why take such a big haircut? This is Justin Verlander, for God’s sake.

The phrase “it takes one to know one” surely doesn’t apply to future Hall of Famers. You don’t need Posey’s immaculate playing credentials to appreciate what Verlander’s done over his career.

One of the more interesting conversations that’s been happening around baseball recently concerns how Hall of Fame voters should treat starting pitchers in this era of five-and-dive and multiple Tommy John surgeries. Basically nobody is putting up traditional Hall of Fame numbers anymore, and the first-time candidacy of Félix Hernández makes for an obvious entry point to the issue. Something is going to have to give, or else we’re going to go decades between Hall of Fame starting pitchers, the argument goes.

And then it stops for the necessary caveat: Except for Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, and Verlander.

Because Verlander’s accomplishments — 262 wins, 3,415 strikeouts, 82.0 WAR, a Rookie of the Year Award, an MVP, three Cy Young Awards, and four other top-three finishes — play in any era under any standard. He’s not only a Hall of Famer, he’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer. And not only is he a first-ballot Hall of Famer, his candidacy is such that any voter who leaves him off their ballot is going to be (correctly) dismissed as a crank.

Surely Posey knows this. His Giants defeated Verlander’s Tigers in the 2012 World Series. In fact, Verlander was already a star when Posey was merely a prospect — even a pitching prospect, of sorts. In 2008, Posey posted a 1.17 ERA with six saves as a two-way player at Florida State. That year, the Giants drafted him fifth overall. Verlander finished that season with an even 600 major league innings pitched for his career.

Verlander is only four years older than Posey. The Giants’ baseball ops ringmaster admittedly retired young, but not that young. Verlander turns 42 next month, and like most civic institutions that came into being during the Reagan Administration, he’s falling apart.

Verlander aged extremely well, all things considered; he won two of his Cy Young Awards after he turned 36, with one of them coming after he missed (essentially) two full seasons with a torn UCL. At age 40, he commanded $43.3 million a year in a free agent contract from the Mets, and pitched well that season, which included a second midseason trade to Houston.

But last year was really bad. Jay Jaffe broke down the gory details in September, as the unthinkable was becoming increasingly probable: The Astros would have to leave Verlander off their postseason roster. And that’s not just an artifact of Houston’s great pitching depth; Verlander’s fastball lost velocity, his changeup lost some run, his curveball wasn’t curving, his slider wasn’t sliding.

In his Cy Young season of 2022, Verlander threw four pitch types; opponents couldn’t manage a .200 batting average or a .300 slugging against any of them. In 2024, Verlander’s two most common pitches were his fastball (against which opponents hit .299 and slugged .497) and his curveball (.340 and .560).

I apologize for being slightly unkind with this next part, but here are some selected stats from two veteran starting pitchers who hit the free agent market this winter. One is Verlander. Can you guess which one, and who the other is?

Player B is Verlander. Player A is Patrick Corbin.

And at the risk of complaining about both the food and the portion size, Corbin stayed healthy all year and Verlander didn’t. Two stints on the IL — one for shoulder inflammation and another for neck discomfort — limited Verlander to 17 starts and just 90 1/3 innings. That’s a career low, apart from his two-start debut in 2005 and his Tommy John-imposed sabbatical.

It’s why Verlander is making $15 million to play for the Giants instead of $35 million to play for the Astros, which feels like it would’ve been Armageddon for a team that just traded Kyle Tucker before he got too expensive.

Nowadays, $15 million doesn’t buy all that much on the starting pitching market. I’m hardly the first observer to notice that Verlander got the same guaranteed contract from San Francisco that Alex Cobb got from Verlander’s old team, the Tigers. Cobb made only three starts last year, and at 37, he’s not that much younger than Verlander. Nor does he have anything like Verlander’s superstar history.

But $15 million is just about what it costs to get a no. 5 starter for a year on the free agent market. And as hard as it is to believe, that’s about where Verlander slots into the Giants’ rotation, behind Logan Webb, Robbie Ray, Jordan Hicks, and Kyle Harrison.

Posey, the retired superstar with zero baseball ops experience, is unique among baseball’s 30 prince-bishops of roster construction. His appointment is a throwback to an older, less enlightened age. It’s Wayne Gretzky coaching the Arizona Coyotes or Ted Williams managing the Senators.

I’m fascinated by Posey’s every move. Partially because, in the post-Theo Epstein gold rush to stuff every front office with private school MBAs until you run out of team-branded quarter-zips, front office thought has gotten pretty same-y. Whatever Posey does, it’s different, and therefore interesting. But if he wades into this job without proper forethought and humility, it could also be a highly entertaining failure.

And yet, as much as my attitude toward the current Giants could best be described as “skeptical rubbernecking,” I know that Posey is not an idiot. He’s not signing Verlander because he thinks he’s getting a no. 1 starter for the cost of a lightly used Cleveland Guardians castoff. He’s signing Verlander because, like every team, the Giants need innings in bulk. And while Verlander might be cooked, it bears repeating that he was hurt last year and playing in an unfavorable home ballpark. Moreover, Verlander allowed his highest opponent BABIP in a decade, and his xERA was more than a run and a half lower than his ERA. There’s an argument (I don’t know if I buy it, but it exists) that Verlander’s decline has been exaggerated by rotten batted ball luck. Which would make him ripe for a bounce-back season, even despite his advanced age.

Unkink Verlander’s neck, settle his score with the BABIP gods, and put him in a stadium with a big outfield; you might get 100 league-average innings out of him. Surely that’s a worthwhile investment of $15 million in this market. At least, that seems to be the logic. We’ll see if it turns out to be sound.