The Father's Day crowd in downtown Detroit was likely unanimous in its disappointment that Keider Montero was on the hill for the Tigers. It's nothing personal against Keider, but until a few days prior, this game against the White Sox was looking far more momentous. Justin Verlander, finally healthy again, would be appearing for the first time at home in a Tigers uniform since he was traded to Houston in 2017.
Except Verlander wasn't quite healthy again. Despite a couple of rehab outings with the Toledo Mud Hens earlier this month, ramping up to his MLB return after just one bad start back on March 30, JV had to be scratched with a hamstring injury—a different ailment than the hip problem that was previously keeping him away. This new issue doesn't sound like a minor setback. In fact, it raises questions about whether the 43-year-old has finally hit the end of his career.
"This is not a matter of days," manager A.J. Hinch said. "It's a matter of weeks. We're going to need a full rehab process to get him back to throwing again."
"I've always said I want to play until the wheels fall off," Verlander said. "And I don't know, maybe they are falling off. I hope not."
The consolation for the fans who had tickets to Sunday's game is that they got to see the Tigers' first extra-innings win of the season, which completed a sweep of the Chicago White Sox. Down 3-1 in the bottom of the eighth, catcher Dillon Dingler continued his run as the team's best hitter, smashing a Dillon Dingler dinger to halve the deficit before returning in the ninth with a two-out knock to tie the score. The Sox plated their extra-inning ghost runner in the top of the 10th, but a parade of Tiger singles in the bottom half did the trick. A crowd that was certainly bigger than it would have been had Verlander not seemed ready to return got to watch Matt Vierling bloop one into right for the winning run.
The Tigers are now 11-6 in the month of June, which is fantastic news for a team that stumbled and crashed its way through a 6-22 May. They're still five games back of a playoff spot and 7.5 games back of the division, so there's nothing to get excited about just yet. But the AL Central, a division in which zero teams currently hold a positive run differential, has a way of entrancing even the lowly and meek into believing they might inherit a playoff position. Neither the White Sox nor the Guardians—nor the Blue Jays at the back of the wild card, for that matter—are doing all that much to assert themselves as sure-thing postseason clubs. So why not Detroit?
Personally, I can think of 22 good reasons why not, all from the month of May. But I also can't deny that the Tigers absolutely have the potential to rise to bland mediocrity in an American League that's probably going to reward at least one blandly mediocre team with a playoff spot. To get there, the biggest thing they'll need is the willpower not to trade Tarik Skubal at the deadline, coupled with a return to form for the Cy Young winner who has thus far delivered two nondescript starts and one elite redass freakout since his own return from injury. If the Tigers do end up trading the pending free agent, well, he was the primary reason that their playoff drought ended in the first place, so best of luck with that.
Less tangibly important, if still high in the hearts of Tiger fans, would be some sort of contribution from Verlander this year. The Tigers just swept a division rival, so I will not begrudge anyone a brief indulgent fantasy of JV on the mound in home whites for an August series against Cleveland that actually holds some weight in the standings. It's a long road to get there, of course, and in order to make it, Verlander will need some steady wheels. His and Hinch's quotes from last week's setback are very much of the "don't get your hopes up" variety. But what's baseball without a little hope?
