If Sunday's game was the last time the White Sox will ever have to face Justin Verlander, the saga closed on the most fitting note. They've seen more dominant versions of Verlander, but his overall effectiveness was par for the course, as he limited the Sox to one run over six innings.
Verlander's thrown 49 starts and 330 ⅔ innings against the Sox in his career, with both totals being second only to the Cleveland Guardians, but while the overall numbers reflect success (23-14, 3.62 ERA), they're a little bit watered down by his early-career struggles, as the White Sox once were one of the few teams with the ability to humble Verlander during his ascent.
Then they lost it, and never meaningfully regained it. When you narrow it down to his last 32 starts -- the standard season workload for a top-flight starter -- he'd garner considerable Cy Young support, going 18-5 with a 2.97 ERA and 220 strikeouts over 218 innings.
It's hard to know whether this is Verlander's last season. He's 42 years old, on the verge of throwing 3,500 regular-season innings on top of 226 more in the postseason, and the things he said about new Tigers ace Tarik Skubal last month certainly had a full-circle feel ...
“To me, if I’m the Tigers and I’ve got the best pitcher in baseball, I want that mother—— out there as long as possible,” Verlander said. “Ride that horse. Hell yeah. That’s the way I felt about it when I was pitching. They’re like, ‘You’re our guy, we want you every fifth day.’ They would skip the fifth starter. We have an extra off days, and it’s like, ‘Hey, how you feeling?’ … I feel good. It was fine. It was great. It was awesome. And I loved it.”
... but despite the longest winless streak of his career, he's pitching decently for a team that considers itself a National League contender, so he doesn't have reason to invite the conversation unless he wanted to lay track for one of those grand leaguewide retirement tours. If he ends up doing it this year, the White Sox won't have to get him a gift. Then again, they've already given him so much.
Spare Parts
- Sources: Rocco Baldelli has team option picked up for 2026 season -- The Athletic
- Twins mum on report of Baldelli extension -- MLB.com
The Twins followed up an 18-8 May with a 9-18 June in which they nearly allowed nearly twice as many runs (from 86 to 169), so you can imagine that it wasn’t the best time for the fan base to learn that Rocco Baldelli will get an eighth season at the helm.
It's fitting that Dave Parker and Dick Allen will go into the Hall of Fame as members of the same class, because both had careers that aren't neatly represented by their Baseball-Reference.com pages, for better (peak value, style) or worse (off-the-field problems, reputational issues). Parker's version has softer edges because of his ability to accept role-player duties over the second act of a longer career, and then his public battle with Parkinson's Disease, but since I first became familiar with Parker during his days as a DH for the late-1980s Oakland A's, it still took me a long time to understand his entire story arc.
- How do the Brewers keep doing this this? Milwaukee keeps its secrets in 'The Keg' -- USA Today
- Luis Severino doesn't care if A's 'get mad' about him bashing Sacramento stadium -- The Athletic
Buried in this massive Bob Nightengale notebook is his report that the Athletics "can't wait" to trade Luis Severino halfway into the first year of his three-year, $67 million contract because he keeps trashing the A's temporary stadium, which will at least be their home through 2027, if not beyond.
The Trajekt machine is one area where the White Sox aren't the last adopters of a popular technology. The Post surveyed the league and found that five teams have yet to purchase a Trajekt, including the Nationals. Old friend Alex Call does what he can with an Oculus headset, though, which he credits with his ability to post some of the league's best plate discipline numbers.
Lucas Giolito closed out his June by allowing just two earned runs over his final 25 innings, lowering his ERA from 6.42 at the start of the month to 3.99 at the end of it.
As somebody who will choose the pedestrian route whenever possible, I'm impressed that Bruce Bochy walked from Miller Park to the Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee, less because of the distance (four miles) and more because of the inconsistent lighting and sidewalks.
The Reds cut Jeimer Candelario loose halfway into the strange three-year, $45 million contract he signed back in December 2023, and found no takers on the DFA market for any of the $22.5 million remaining on his contract. This is mostly interesting for those following the amount of money teams are willing to eat.
