We get it Justin, you married quite possibly the most gorgeous woman on the planet and are a first-ballot Hall Of Famer once you hang up your cleats.
Now publicly crucifying Commissioner Rob Manfred about the baseball being juiced while representing the Houston Astros at the All-Star festivities is making sure the entire baseball world takes notice.
Verlander, 36, is starting his second All Star Game tomorrow night, which will be his eighth appearance in the game. He needs only 141 strikeouts to become only the 18th in history to reach 3,000. It is not out of the though he could finish in the top 10 all time with a few more years pitching some of the best baseball of his career. Playing with a championship contending core as young as the Astros have.
“Mr. Kate Upton” did bring a lot of truth to the table when blasting Manfred’s ideas to increase offense since he took over for Bud Selig in 2015. Major League Baseball is the parent company of Rawlings, the supplier of game balls for the league. Verlander brought up the financials of both the league and the company by saying:
“If any other $40 billion company bought out a $400 million company and the product changed dramatically, it's not a guess as to what happened.”
He was not that far off either, as Rawlings had a reported $516 million in revenue for 2018 according to D&B Hoover’s, the world’s largest commercial database of business records. Major League Baseball had a reported $10.3 billion in revenue last season as well.
If chicks dig the long ball, you almost have to chuckle that Upton married a guy whose job it is to deny women their favorite part of the sport, at least that is what Nike taught us back in the late 90’s.
The league set a record back in May with 1,135 home runs hit by its 30 clubs, which eclipsed a mark only set in August 2017. Toronto Blue Jay phenom Vlad Guerrero Jr. set the Home Run Derby record with 40 “bing bongs” in the second round in Cleveland Monday night.
He hit 29 in the first round. Joc Pederson of the Los Angeles Dodgers hit 39 in the second round.
Granted these are baseballs probably wound even tighter to guarantee they will jump out of the park faster, but also remember this is after the MLB changed the Bing Bong Derby format last season. Josh Hamilton set the traditional format record with 28 back in 2008 while with the Texas Rangers.
The game has done everything over the last 20 years to drive up scoring, while shortening the careers of its pitchers. The mound has been lowered, the ball is juiced, and each new ballpark becomes closer to the launching pad that is Coors Canaveral.
When LeBron James speaks about issues in his sport the league listens. The NFL almost seems to want to get approval from the New England Patriots before they comment on anything a player says criticizing the on-field product. The NHL just came off their worst officiated Stanley Cup Playoffs in league history, then made rule changes a few weeks later.
So why would baseball not want to at least listen to one of their most respected pitchers? Since 1992 only Verlander, the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw, and Oakland’s Dennis Eckersley have won their league’s Most Valuable Player awards as pitchers. If Kershaw stands on the record with Verlander before the postseason it might be time for baseball to give something back to the players for a change.
-JC24