Justin Verlander delivered his best outing since being traded back to the Houston Astros earlier this summer against the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday night.
Verlander struck out a season-high nine batters over six scoreless innings. The 40-year-old found something mechanically he corrected since his last start.
\"I think I found something early in my mechanics with my load that answered a lot of questions and lined up down the mechanics path of what I was looking for,\" Verlander said. \"I didn\'t know how it was going to turn out, but I think the results were really good. The velo jumped up a little bit, I was behind the ball better, timing was better. All very positive things.\"
He got 16 swings-and-misses (his second-most this season), including 13 on his fastball, which averaged 95.1 mph (94.3 mph season average). He\'s 7-2 with a 2.17 ERA in his last 11 starts.
\"I think the shape of my fastball was back to what it used to be,\" Verlander said. \"Earlier this season, I was kind of cutting across the four-seam a little bit, just wasn\'t a very efficient spin. For a long time I’ve been trying to figure out how to get that back. It\'s been slowly getting there, but I feel like [it\'s] the last piece of the puzzle, I hope. You can only go start by start but the results today were really what I was looking for.\"