Justin Verlander is calling it a career. The right-hander announced Wednesday that this season will be his last, a decision that came down alongside news he’d been named a Legend Pick for next week’s All-Star Game in Philadelphia, an honor Commissioner Rob Manfred hands out to recognize a body of work rather than a single season.
Verlander explained the timing in a statement, saying he’d always wanted the game itself to signal when it was time to walk away. He’s committed to finishing out the year, first in Detroit’s uniform, before stepping away for good.
For Astros fans, Verlander’s story will always run through Houston. Acquired in a deadline trade in 2017, he became one of the central figures in the most successful stretch in franchise history, helping deliver two World Series titles. He won ALCS MVP honors that first postseason after the trade. He set another tone five years later, striking out 11 in a Game 1 rout of the Yankees during Houston’s 2022 ALCS sweep.
His numbers from those Houston years alone would headline most careers. He won a Cy Young at 39 in 2022, going 18-4 with a 1.75 ERA, one of three Cy Young seasons in a career that also includes an MVP award and a Rookie of the Year trophy—a rare combination shared with only one other pitcher in history. He threw one of his three career no-hitters in an Astros uniform, in 2019.
He’ll take the field at the All-Star Game as a Tiger for the first time in over a decade, honored now as a legend of the franchise he left behind in that 2017 trade. But the two rings, the deadline-day gamble that brought him to Houston in the first place, and the swing-and-miss stuff he carried into his 40s here will likely be the chapter that defines how this city remembers him.
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Photo: Keith Allison / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
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