Justin Verlander gets deep in 'Sunday Night Baseball' interview

Many fans and players do not like in-game interviews.

Many players don’t like the distraction, and fans don’t care because so many of these interviews reveal nothing, with players giving predictable, “We’re just trying to give our best effort and get everyone involved” responses.

Yet sometimes these interviews strike gold, and that happened during ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball game between the Houston Astros and Baltimore Orioles. Astros ace Justin Verlander donned a headset and gave an in-depth breakdown on the problems facing MLB pitchers in this era.

“You have opinions on the state of the game, or getting the starting pitcher more involved?” play-by-play announcer Jon Sciambi asked Verlander.

“I saw some of the proposals that were out there… I think it’s a conversation that needs to be had, quite frankly,” Verlander said. “The ‘feel’ has kind of gone out of the game … Coaches don’t talk about it, they talk about how nasty your stuff is, how much you’re spinning it, how fast you’re throwing it, they don’t talk about setting guys up, locating it, stuff like that.

“If we start dictating … starting pitchers getting deeper in the games I think those conversations will start to come back. … I don’t think guys want to see every pitcher go out there and throw two or three innings and get yanked.”

Verlander also addressed how pitching philosophy has changed since he made his MLB debut in 2005. The emphasis today is on throwing hard.

“It was about getting outs, pitching to contact, obviously you would go for the strike out when you needed it,” Verlander said, recalling the old philosophy. “The analytics … it’s going to be hard to put that genie back in the bottle … the harder you throw it, the more you spin it, the more your breaking ball moves, the harder it is to hit.”

After criticizing the overuse of analytics, Verlander pointed out they have a place in the game.

“You’d be amazed at what you can see and glean from this technology that we have now,” he said. “It’s pretty cool. … On one hand, I say that analytics needs to go away a little bit. On the other hand, it’s a beautiful thing, and you can learn a ton from it.”

A three-time Cy Young Award winner, Verlander knows a lot about the art of pitching. Few probably expected him to share so much knowledge during a simple in-game interview.

[ESPN]

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