Justin Verlander worked out the kinks with the Mets — and the Astros are enjoying the payoff.
The right-hander improved to 3-1 with Houston following his trade from the Mets by pitching six shutout innings Tuesday in the Astros’ 7-3 win over the Boston Red Sox at Minute Maid Park.
It was Verlander’s first scoreless outing since the Aug. 1 deal, which sent the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner back to the Lone Star State.
The future Hall-of-Famer’s two-year, $86 million contract with the Mets got off to a rough start — opening the year on the IL with a shoulder strain and owning a 4.50 ERA through his first nine starts.
But the 40-year-old ace began showing signs of his Cy Young self in Queens, allowing nine runs over his final 49 1/3 innings with the Mets.
That allowed him to become a valuable trade chip at the deadline and helped set up a return to Houston.
“I’ve been working really hard this year (with) just kind of a lot of mechanical tweaks,” Verlander said, according to the Houston Chronicle. “And I think I found something kind of early in my mechanics with my load that answered a lot of questions and kind of, like, lined up down the mechanics path of what I was looking for. Didn’t know how it was going to turn out. But I think the results were really good.
“The (velocity) jumped up a little bit. I was behind the ball better. Timing was better. All very positive things.”
On Tuesday, Verlander threw 96 pitches, 60 of which were strikes, leading to nine Red Sox punchouts, his most in a single game since the Aug. 1 trade.
Verlander averaged 95.1 mph on his fastball, which is almost a full mile-per-hour higher than his season average, and Boston had 13 misses on 38 swings against his heater, according to the Chronicle.
“I think the shape of my fastball was kind of what it used to be,” said Verlander, who expressed he hadn’t quite felt right this year until tweaking his mechanics.
“Earlier this season, I was kind of cutting across the four-seam a little bit, it just wasn’t a very efficient spin. And for a long time, I’ve been trying to figure out how to get that back. And it’s kind of like slowly been getting there. …
“You can only go start by start, but the results today were really what I was looking for.”
Verlander also had fans buzzing Tuesday after talking trash with Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who was Houston’s bench coach when the Astros won the 2017 World Series.
Verlander was unhappy with Cora for coming onto the field and telling him to hurry up in the second inning when his PitchCom device was malfunctioning.
While walking back to the mound, a microphone on the field picked up Verlander’s final words to Cora: “F–k off, Alex.”
Verlander laughed it off after that game, saying Cora might have done it just to try and fluster him.
“In part, it was just me being like, I’m done with this,” Verlander said. “You do what you want, talk to the umpire. I’m going to worry about pitching.”
Warning: Explicit language
Cora wouldn’t be around to see how this one ended, getting tossed in the bottom of the seventh inning for arguing balls and strikes.
It was Cora’s second ejection in Boston’s last three games, and he got his money’s worth this time, standing at the plate and kicking dirt before yelling in plate umpire Pat Hoberg’s face.
