Justin Verlander's brutal start in Detroit shows SF Giants dodged a major bullet

After Justin Verlander had such a solid season with the SF Giants last season at the age of 42, some fans were hoping the veteran would come back to to San Francisco. Instead, he reunited with the Detroit Tigers and the Giants have to be feeling pretty good about that so far.

Verlander had about as rough a start as possible in his return to the Tigers. In his first start of the season against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Verlander gave up five earned runs in 3 and 2/3 innings of work as he allowed six hits including one home run along with two walks.

It was not a great start, and to add injury to insult he is now on the 15-day IL with a hip injury so he is going to miss his next few starts.

SF Giants have to be glad they did not bring back Justin Verlander

That is a less-than-ideal start to Verlander’s second stint with Detroit. Giants fans will remember that not everything was perfect with Verlander last season. He went through some really tough stretches on the mound and had an IL stint that kept him on the shelf for a while.

Yet, he still finished the year having made 29 starts and had a 3.85 ERA. He surprisingly got better as the season went on and delivered some of his best starts for San Francisco coming down the stretch as the team tried to make a push for the playoffs. 

But there was a time in July last season when his ERA was at 4.99 and there were genuine conversations about whether the Giants should try to trade him away.

Looking back, it really is a miracle that he pitched as well as he did for the Giants so to think he could replicate those kind of numbers at his age is fanciful thinking.

That’s why the Giants have to be happy they didn’t roll the dice on him again. Detroit can afford to take that risk both for nostalgia purposes and because the Tigers have one of the more formidable and deeper rotations in baseball. So if Verlander ends up making just 15 regular season starts for the team but is healthy and at his best in the playoffs that is fine.

The Giants cannot afford that, though. They need a starter who can reasonably start 20-something games which is why it was disappointing that the team signed Adrian Houser and Tyler Mahle, two guys who have struggled to stay healthy at times in their careers. 

They’ve at least remained on the mound so far, but Mahle’s last start was not all that good so it’s definitely fair to question the team’s strategy when it comes to the starting rotation even if they deserve some credit for resisting the temptation to bring back Verlander.