Detroit — Justin Verlander walked past manager AJ Hinch’s office a couple of hours before the game Sunday.
Hinch was being interviewed by the Peacock broadcast team that included former Cubs and Yankees standout Anthony Rizzo.
“JV walked by and talked to Rizzo,” Hinch said. “He did not talk to me (wry smile). He was all upbeat and happy. I joked with Rizzo. I said that means he’s feeling really good.”
He was absolutely correct.
Verlander was very encouraged by the bullpen session he had just thrown, to the point where he thinks he might be ready to take the next step. Which would be facing hitters in a live BP session.
“It was good,” Verlander said. “We’ve decided to not try to put a timeline on it. Just focus on is it getting better every day and it is 100% trending in the right direction. I felt really good today. Hopefully it was good enough to start moving forward.”
Verlander, who has been on the injured list since April 1 with muscle inflammation in his left hip, will still have to check off a few more boxes before taking the next step. The trainers will want to see how well he recovers from what was another full-intensity, two-inning session.
“We were hopeful going into today (that the next step would be facing hitters),” Hinch said. “But I can’t be sure what the next step is until we talk it through.”
Verlander said he was hitting 94 mph with his fastball and he was pleased with how the rest of his arsenal was grading out metrically.
“I need hitters to tell for sure, but the feel, like mentally it feels great,” he said. “The look feels great. The metrics are good. It’s all positive. The only negative is I’m not in a game yet.”
This injury and the slow pace of recovery has tested Verlander’s patience. It’s a more unusual injury than say a hamstring or groin. There is more data on those two injuries, more medical precedent on how long the healing should take.
Not so with this one.
“I had a lat strain in the past,” Verlander said. “So with that, it’s like a six-week injury. So, OK, I understand the timeline and I can base my healing pattern on that. I can feel good about winning every single day, even though it doesn’t feel 100%.”
With this injury, Verlander said, he had unrealistic expectations from the start.
“That put me in a place where I felt like I was losing on certain days,” he said. “Why isn’t this 100%, right? You get in this negative mindset where you think you are losing instead of winning each day. I’ve had a lot more in-depth conversations with the trainers and doctors and I am in a more positive mindset now.”
He said he believes he’s discovered the root cause of the issue and, even better, it’s exposed a mechanical flaw that he’s been working to clean up through the rehab process.
“I did some real work on fixing those and it’s starting to show up in my mechanics,” he said. “The mechanics work that this has pointed me toward is going to make me a better pitcher, again. I believe that.”
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
@cmccosky
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Tigers’ Justin Verlander feels ready to take his rehab to next level
Reporting by Chris McCosky, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
