I can't seem to find anything and still secretly holding out hope he can return before the playoffs. Is that still even a possibility?
Ded, like Mando. @Jontro . (but supposedly his rehab is going well and maybe he'll be a post season reliever?).
I think Houston needs to go on a deep run if he were to possibly come back. I would guess either something like game 6 or 7 in the ALCS or World Series. Now if you're Verlander, are you desperate for another World Series that you come back this season and try to help out and risk further injury or play it smart and don't rush and don't even think about attempting to pitch this season, especially because he's a free agent. It's a shame that he felt good last season and all of a sudden, right before the playoffs he realized he needed tjs. Had he gotten it a couple months earlier, he could have possibly been available late this season/start of playoffs.
Tyler Glasgow trying something similar this year. LMJ actually did pitch in the playoffs in 2018 with a torn UCL (after resting for 2 months). There is precedence for what JV tried to do last year, he probably just couldn’t pitch effectively with that sort of pain. My understanding is you don’t really make it worse once its torn, its just extremely painful (and obviously your stuff suffers some). JV should try his hardest to be as ready as possible to be an opener or pitch 1-2 innings of relief…. But if this staff is fully healthy (and adds expected reinforcements to the bullpen)… he will be a pure luxury, not a necessity.
Best case scenario is that JV will a 2 inning opener in the playoffs, fronting one of our starters who either struggle to pitch more than 5 IPs or who are way past their previous IP max for a season. WRT luxury, an effective JV is easily better than the last bullpen pitcher on the playoff roster.
If Verlander's not ready to pitch until game 6 of the ALCS, he's going to be shut down for the season. If the Astros are that good without him and make it that far, no way you roll the dice at that point on a guy who hasn't pitched in over a year. It's just a set up for a massive amount of failure and second-guessing if he's not absolutely perfect and really, it's unfair to put him in that situation where you're throwing him immediately into high leverage situations (no point in bringing him back at all for just low-leverage situations with only 6-8 games left in the season). He needs to be ready before the playoffs or not at all, in my opinion.
If Verlander had any plans of playing this year he'd probably have to be ramping things up now to be ready by mid-September for a few regular season games before the playoffs. He never posts about his rehab, just about how much he's enjoying having a paid 6 month summer vacation.
Yeah at this point we have to expect he will not appear this season. Most likely he will wait until January/February and hold a showcase before signing. Wouldn’t even surprise me if he is subtlety making it difficult for Houston to track his progress to make it hard for them to determine whether to make a QO or not.
Chances are JV, trainers, and anybody else who needs to be involved already has a set timetable on all things going forward… unless he had some sort of setback that nobody knows about.
Such a shame he’s not with the squad providing some kind of mentorship to the young arms, and he’s still getting paid. I’m losing respect for him daily
Honestly, it's not his team. We enjoyed having him in 2017-2019. But he's gone. It would be different if we were Detroit with emotional ties and a long history.
I’m not really holding out much hope for that. He had the surgery 9/30/20. By comparison, Chris Sale had his surgery 3/31/20 and just had his first start back yesterday.
