San Francisco Giants Future Hall of Famer Verlander Is a Dying Breed

Pitchers are used much differently today than when Justin Verlander came up in 2005, making the San Francisco Giants veteran the last of his kind.

Feb 13, 2025; Scottsdale, AZ, USA; San Francisco Giants pitcher Justin Verlander (35) watches players work out in the bullpen during spring training camp. | Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images

Major League Baseball's biggest advantage over other professional sports leagues is its unparalleled history and sense of tradition.

It has the clearest career milestones ranging from 3,000 hits to 500 home runs to 300 wins, each nice round number making it easy for baseball fans to identify the best to ever do it.

That's why its ironic that no professional sport has undergone more change in recent years than baseball.

Data drives decisions in all businesses and offense is the primary draw for the majority of fans in any sport, it makes sense to shift things in those directions. At the end of the day sports is an entertainment product, which means that anything that increases fan engagement or grows the game is good for the sport.

The powers that be have spent considerable effort on speeding up the game over the years, resulting in polarizing shifts like the pitch clock or starting extra innings with a runner on second base.

Concepts like launch angle have been around in a meaningful way since the great Ted Williams wrote the book "The Science of Hitting" in 1968, but the sheer volume of publicly available data points that can be found via Statcast is astonishing when one stops to think about it.

How players prepare for games and how managers use data to inform decisions has transformed baseball into a radically different viewing experience than it was at the turn of the century.

One could argue that nothing has changed more than the role pitchers play in baseball. As an example, only four pitchers exceeded 200 total innings in 2024, while 44 hit that mark in 2010.

Roy Halladay led the league with nine complete games in 2010, while only three pitchers recorded two last season.

San Francisco Giants pitcher Justin Verlander is the active career leader in most categories, including wins (262), innings (3,415.2) and his 81.0 bWAR.

Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw are two other Cooperstown-bound former aces that headlined the last generation of premium pitchers, but Verlander sits on top of that elite, still going group.

Verlander has 46 more wins than Scherzer and 50 more than Kershaw, who collectively comprise the top three on the career victories list. Injured New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole is fourth, with his 153 wins trailing Verlander by 109 victories.

Verlander is 42-years-old, so he may run out of steam before hitting the magic number of 300 career wins. Even if he does he's positioned to be the last Major League pitcher to win at least 250 games for the foreseeable future, if not ever.

Like it or not, the evolution of baseball has changed the job description for Major League pitchers, and that notion doesn't even include the National League now having a full-time DH.

Premium pitchers still exist, but few are expected to go out and carry games every five days like Verlander, Scherzer and Kershaw did in their primes. Kershaw and Scherzer are still active, but Verlander is the best equipped to still make an impact.

From the line of the best pitchers of all time ranging from Bob Gibson to Sandy Koufax to Nolan Ryan, Verlander is the last of his kind. Enjoy him while you still can.