Justin Verlander

Pitcher Justin Verlander’s baseball resume is a testament to how he has dominated his position and his sport for more than two decades.

• Rookie of the Year: 2006
• American League Most Valuable Player: 2011
• Cy Young Award: 2011, 2019, 2022
• All-Star team: 2007, 2009–13, 2018, 2019, 2022
• No-hitters pitched: 2007, 2011, 2019
• World Series champion: 2017, 2022
• Hall of Fame: ?

The only reason for the question mark about Verlander’s entry into Baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, is that as of 2026, he is still pitching in the Major Leagues. At 43, he is baseball’s oldest active player. He will become eligible for induction into the Hall of Fame five years after he retires and will almost certainly be selected in his first year of eligibility. In July 2026, he announced that he would retire at the end of the season, making him eligible for the Hall in 2032.

Early years

Justin Verlander was born in 1983 to Richard and Kathy Verlander in a suburb of Richmond, Virginia. All parents know their kids are special, but on a family outing when Justin was about 10 years old, Richard Verlander got a sense of just how special. Richard challenged his son to a stone-throwing competition. Dad went first, hurling a rock that landed midway across a pond. Now it was Justin’s turn. He hurled his stone not into the pond, but across it, where it landed in the trees on the far side.

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Justin Verlander went on to play high school baseball before pitching for three years with the Old Dominion University Monarchs, where he set a Virginia state record for most strikeouts in a single season. In 2004 he was drafted by the Detroit Tigers, the second player selected overall in the Major League draft.

Professional career

After pitching for the Tigers’ minor league affiliates, Verlander made his first big league appearance on July 4, 2005. In 2006, his first full Major League season, Verlander won 17 games and was named the American League Rookie of the Year. His stellar pitching helped lead the Tigers to their first World Series since 1984, although they lost in five games to the St. Louis Cardinals.

With each season, Verlander continued to rack up strikeouts and wins with a fastball that routinely flirted with and surpassed 100 miles per hour. In June 2007, in just his second Major League season, he recorded his first no-hitter, striking out 12 Milwaukee Brewers batters in the process.

But in 2011 Verlander found another gear, recording one of the most dominant seasons by a pitcher in baseball history. How dominant was he in 2011? Consider:

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• He won 24 games, one of just three pitchers that year to record 20+ wins.
• He also led the American League in earned run average (ERA; 2.40), innings pitched (251), and strikeouts (250). Leading the league in wins, ERA, and strikeouts earned him the rare Triple Crown.
• He threw his second no-hitter on May 7, 2011, taking a perfect game into the eighth inning.
• He won his first Cy Young Award.
• He was named the AL Most Valuable Player, becoming just the 10th starting pitcher in baseball history to win the Cy Young and MVP in the same season.

The epic 2011 season was followed by a 2012 season that saw the Tigers again make it to the World Series, only to be swept by the San Francisco Giants. From 2010–14, one of Verlander’s teammates was another future Hall of Fame pitcher, Max Scherzer. A World Series ring was still on Verlander’s bucket list. After spending 13 seasons in Detroit, in August 2017, he was traded to the Houston Astros. Two months later, after dominant pitching by Verlander in September and the postseason, the Astros won the World Series, and Verlander had his first ring.

If 2011 was the marquee season of Verlander’s career, 2019 was a close second. The season would see him pitch his third no-hitter, win 21 games, and strike out 300 batters for the first time in his career. For all that, he earned his second Cy Young Award. In 2022, his last full season with the Astros, he claimed a third Cy Young and a second World Series ring.

He spent most of the 2023 season with the New York Mets (where he again teamed up with Scherzer) before being traded again to the Astros, where he spent the rest of 2023 and the 2024 season. He pitched for the San Francisco Giants in a frustrating 2025 season, where he started 16 straight games without recording a win.

Then in February 2026, days short of his 43rd birthday, Verlander signed a one-year, $13 million contract to return to Detroit and wear the Old English D uniform again. When he showed up at training camp, some of his teammates shared with him that they had watched him play when they were just kids. The nostalgia was not lost on Verlander, and for his part, he seemed to want to soak it all in, telling The Athletic in March 2026:

I don’t know how much longer I’m going to play.…All I know is, there’s not that much time left. So enjoy it while you can.

The 2026 season, however, was marked by injury and he started only one game for the Tigers. He announced in July 2026 that he would retire at the end of the season. Verlander made the last start of his storied career on September 26, 2026. When it came time for him to leave the game, it wasn’t his manager, A.J. Hinch who came to the mound but rather his 7-year-old daughter Genevieve. The stunned Verlander wept as he hugged his daughter and left the mound to a standing ovation.