Verlander

And like look, we want Justin Verlander to win but we definitely do not want the Astros to win. Justin Verlander is as old as I am. Justin Verlander looks like he could be part of your D&D group that meets every month, and thank god he can get a babysitter for the kids, etc. Justin Verlander has a skincare routine, but you wouldn’t know it from behind the beard shadow. We see ourselves in Justin Verlander, a guy who looks like he is just a guy, happy to be there, K’ing 11 through 8 without blinking, who knows how.

But the Astros already won last year, so on top of the problematic uniform that Justin Verlander wears, this is all boring. Everybody we wanted to be in the final four is not, and everybody we dreaded going this far has done so – except for the Arizona Diamondbacks, a team whose all-time most legendary player is most known for absolutely detonating a bird at spring training. The Diamondbacks succeeding at anything is currently the greatest troll in American sports. I guess this is all good fun, but man, after the Orioles crashed out they should have just closed up the season early without a world champion. Sometimes we just all know when to end baseball for the year. We don’t need to run the Monte Carlo simulation all the way through Halloween if it’s not going to do anyone any favors. We can throw on sweaters, drink mulled cider, and think about one-act plays with no sympathetic characters, instead.

The Astros lost Verlander’s start. One talks about the losing pitcher when they are famous, but really the Rangers owned that game, quieted the Astros’ bats, stranded a lot of runners. Verlander did good – low earned run count, went deep in the game – but nobody cares, of course, because the team lost. In these moments, one always defaults to scanning the face of the 41-year-old for any signs of psychic damage, and how he must just be done-done after this, and what that means, etc.; and how despite the ring he already earned, don’t we all just want to go out with a bang?

This is materially the same energy as Clayton Kershaw, who last started for the Dodgers five hundred years ago, and did much worse than Verlander. Unlike Verlander, Kershaw is known for doing occasionally well and occasionally badly in October. Like Verlander, he is also known for being old, probably done-done. Both are probably headed for the Hall of Fame at roughly the same time.