Justin Verlander has allowed a league-high 26 home runs thus far in 2019, which is just 4 shy of his career-high for a season and he seems pissed about it.
The Houston Astros ace delivered a fiery rant about MLB having juiced balls.
“It’s a f—— joke,” Verlander told ESPN. “Major League Baseball’s turning this game into a joke. They own Rawlings, and you’ve got Manfred up here saying it might be the way they center the pill. They own the f—— company. If any other $40 billion company bought out a $400 million company and the product changed dramatically, it’s not a guess as to what happened. We all know what happened.
“Manfred the first time he came in, what’d he say? He said we want more offense. All of a sudden he comes in, the balls are juiced? It’s not coincidence. We’re not idiots.”
If he thought those comments would go on without a reply, he was sadly mistaken. Just before the 2019 all-star game, Verlander was summoned by Joe Torre, Jim Leyland and at least one other MLB official that proceeded to give him a stern talking to about his comments.
Fellow Houston Astros starting pitcher Gerritt Cole had this to say about what he heard:
“I may actually have facilitated that meeting,” Cole said. “I saw Jim and Joe were in (manager Alex Cora’s) office. And they said hi. Then Jim, in not a profanity-laden way, said, ‘Get Justin in here right now.’ So I came out and said, ‘Hey, Skip wants to see you.’ And he said, ‘OK.’ Then he comes back and he goes, ‘Man, I just got chewed out.’”
I think that will be the last time Verlander speaks out about balls being juiced again.
