Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I still can’t get over Cam Little hitting a 70-yard field goal. I don’t care that it’s the preseason. Yards aren’t shorter in exhibition games.
In today’s SI:AM:
🧑🚀 Correa’s impact on Astros
⛳ Drama in Memphis
🏈 Rookie QB report
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Verlander enters rare air
When Justin Verlander is eventually inducted into the Hall of Fame, it’s a good bet that his plaque will make mention of what he achieved on Sunday against the Nationals.
When he blew a fastball past Nathaniel Lowe to end the top of the first inning, Verlander became just the 10th pitcher in MLB history to record 3,500 strikeouts in his career.
“I was happy to get there, happy to have the moment with the fans,” Verlander said. “It’s a cool milestone. I really appreciate what it’s taken to get there.”
If Verlander didn’t sound overjoyed after the game, it’s probably because the rest of his day didn’t go very well. He gave up five runs on a season-high 11 hits in an 8–0 Giants loss. It’s been that kind of season for the 42-year-old. He now has a 4.53 ERA and a career-worst 1.500 WHIP in 20 starts.
Even still, Verlander isn’t thinking about retiring. He told John Shea of The San Francisco Standard before Sunday’s game that he wants to pitch again in 2026.
“I mean, I’d like to,” Verlander said. “At this point in my career, if something goes really wrong, I’m not going to rehab a surgery or anything. I always understand that it could be it, but I think physically, I’ve shown some good health this season. As I’ve been on the mound, things have started to get better and better. To me, that’s a good sign with all the work I put in after my nerve injury last year, which notoriously takes a long time. The ball’s rolling in the right direction, and I would like to continue pitching. You never know. It’s a fickle game too, but I think the stuff is still there.”
Even without pitching next season, Verlander is all but assured to pass Walter Johnson for ninth place on the all-time strikeout list. He needs just seven more punchouts to eclipse Johnson’s mark of 3,509. And it’s quite possible that no pitcher alive will end up passing Verlander.
There are only 16 active pitchers with at least 1,500 career strikeouts. One of them, Max Scherzer, is also on the verge of the vaunted 3,500-K milestone. He needs just 44 more to reach that mark. After that, the list of candidates is quite limited.
Clayton Kershaw has 3,014 strikeouts, but he’s 37 years old and it looks like this might be his last year. Even if he does keep pitching, he isn’t racking up strikeouts at a rate that would give him any chance to reach 3,500. He only has 46 strikeouts in 71 innings this season.
Chris Sale is within shouting distance at 2,528 career strikeouts and continues to blow batters away even as he enters the back half of his 30s. He led the NL with 225 K’s during his Cy Young-winning season as a 35-year-old last year. But even if he struck out batters at the same pace he did last season, he’d need to pitch 767 more innings to reach 3,500 K’s. Health is always a question with Sale, though, and that’s more innings than he’s pitched in the last eight seasons combined.
Gerrit Cole might have the best chance to reach 3,500 of any active pitcher other than Scherzer, but even then it’s a stretch. He’s sitting at 2,251 strikeouts in 1,954 career innings. At that pace, he’d need 1,120 innings to reach 3,500. That’s a lot of innings for a guy who’s coming off Tommy John surgery and turns 35 next month. Cole would need to average more than 180 innings pitched for the next six seasons while maintaining the same strikeout rate he had over his first 12 seasons in order to reach the 3,500-K milestone.
Accumulating 3,500 career strikeouts has obviously always been a difficult task if only 10 players in the history of the game have accomplished it, but it’ll be especially tough to achieve in the current era. Yes, strikeouts are on the rise (up from 6.4 per nine innings 20 years ago to 8.4 this season), but teams are also increasingly cautious with their pitchers. Starters don’t go as deep into games as they once did, both because teams want to limit the mileage on players’ arms and because analytics show that hitters are at an advantage when they face a pitcher for a third time in a game. For instance, Verlander has averaged 6.43 innings per start in his career, while Paul Skenes, perhaps MLB’s next great strikeout pitcher, has averaged just 5.89 innings per start. Pitcher injuries are also on the rise, which makes it increasingly unlikely to count on a player to rack up the sort of innings totals required to post gaudy strikeout numbers like Verlander has. All those factors combine to make it highly unlikely that we’ll see another player like Verlander in our lifetimes.
The best of Sports Illustrated
- Carlos Correa’s return to Houston has energized the Astros, both in the clubhouse and at the plate. As Stephanie Apstein writes, the World Series champ is leading by example and looking revitalized in his second stint with the team.
- Mike Kadlick breaks down how the NFL’s top rookie quarterbacks fared in their preseason debuts. From Cam Ward’s efficient scoring drive to Jaxson Dart’s impressive dual-threat showing, several newcomers made strong first impressions.
- Max Schreiber breaks down the drama at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, where five players secured spots inside the top 50 in FedExCup points to keep their playoff hopes alive, while five others saw their seasons end.
- Liverpool has spent big this summer but the Premier League squad still has defensive concerns following their Community Shield defeat.
- Crystal Palace has been demoted from the Europa League — but why can't they compete in UEFA’s second-tier competition despite qualifying?
The top five…
… things I saw yesterday:
5. The obscure sport of “fistball” at the World Games in China. It’s basically like volleyball on a giant grass court.
4. Cal Raleigh’s MLB-best 45th homer of the season. He had gone six games without a homer before hitting one in each of the Mariners’ three games this weekend.
3. Brittney Sykes’s beautiful footwork for a clutch game-tying layup late in the Storm’s game against the Sparks. (Los Angeles went on to win.)
2. Adolis García’s juggling catch.
1. Isaac Collins’s walk-off homer to give the Brewers their ninth straight win.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Justin Verlander Reaches Lofty 3,500-Strikeout Milestone.