Revisiting the Verlander Spectrum
For my first post, I wanted to revisit something I worked on back in 2019;
Verlander’s dominance with the Astros has been well catalogued:
The spectrum was an attempt to show how much more dominant he had been with the Astros compared to his well regarded Tigers career:
However looking back, this spectrum didn’t do as good of a job as the Strikeout to Start# Grid I also did (updated below):
What’s funny is based on just the strikeout totals, the post-TJ 2022 Verlander almost looks like the “washed” Verlander we saw with the Tigers in 2014, the contrast is even more apparent when comparing his xFIP vs ERA graph:
In fact, among Qualified pitchers with tracked xFIP (since 2002), Verlander’s 1.75 was the lowest ERA by someone with an xFIP over 3.00:
Year | Player | ERA | xFIP
2015 | Zack Greinke | 1.66 | 3.22
2020 | T***** B**** | 1.73 | 3.25
2022 | Justin Verlander | 1.75 | 3.23