Justin Verlander Effective After Tweaking Windup
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.\"