It was just like the old days, Max Scherzer drawing a crowd of reporters in the clubhouse at Comerica Park, then Justin Verlander drawing his own. It will be just like it was, Scherzer taking the mound on Wednesday, Verlander on Thursday. It's never been the same since they left, two all-time greats who shined with the Tigers only to shine their resumes without them.
Scherzer departed first, as a free agent after the 2014 season, which ended with the Tigers' Cy Young-laden rotation getting swept out of the playoffs. After five seasons in Detroit, Scherzer signed a $210 million deal with the Nationals that the Tigers weren't willing to match. He's spent every season since making them rue that decision, adding two more Cy Young Awards, six more All-Star Games and the World Series ring that eluded him in Detroit to his Hall of Fame mantle.
"It was definitely tough," Scherzer said Tuesday. "You're here and you want things to work out, but sometimes the business situation doesn't work out in your favor."
Verlander departed at the September trade deadline in 2017. The Tigers were beginning a rebuild that was supposed to be over by now, and Verlander was their biggest piece to sell. They have little to show for their trade with the Astros six years later. Verlander has two more Cy Young Awards, three more All-Star Games and a pair of World Series rings that slipped through his fingers in Detroit. He said it was "difficult, very difficult" to sign off on the eleventh-hour trade that sent him to Houston, but not for any baseball reasons.
"I had 13 years of my life invested in this city. This was my home," Verlander said Tuesday. "As a baseball decision, I thought it was fairly easy. The writing was on the wall. Going from a team that was going in one direction to one that was going in another and had World Series aspirations."
The Tigers haven't had playoff aspirations since. They thought they did last season, only for the roof to cave in on the rebuild. Truth is, they've yet to get it off the ground. They're on their third president of baseball operations and their fourth manager in the last decade, and all-too-patiently waiting for Scott Harris and A.J. Hinch to be the duo that gets it done. The Detroit Tigers, who ripped off four straight division titles from 2011-14, have the fewest wins in Major League Baseball over the last 10 seasons.
Scherzer, meanwhile, has the second most wins among MLB pitchers since leaving Detroit. Verlander has the fifth most, despite missing almost two full seasons due to Tommy John. They reunited this winter on Steve Cohen's Mets, who are throwing money at stars that would have made Mike Ilitch's Tigers blush. Verlander and Scherzer are the two highest-paid players in baseball at $43.3 million per year.
Verlander is set to make his season debut Thursday after starting the year on the injured list. Scherzer is set to return Wednesday after serving a 10-day suspension for using sticky stuff. They are back in Detroit together for the first time since the Tigers lined them up with David Price in the 2014 ALDS, one, two, three Cy Young winners in a row, and the Orioles knocked them down like bowling pins. They are the draw this week at Comerica Park, where the Tigers will serve as a prop.
When Verlander and Scherzer were teammates here -- if not the best of buds -- the Tigers consistently cut checks to win. They had a top-five payroll six years in a row in the 2010's, spending freely with baseball's aristocracy. They had a top-five winning percentage and a top-10 attendance record over the same stretch of time. Funny how that works. The Tigers used to routinely draw 35,000 fans to Comerica Park. Verlander and Scherzer will be lucky to see half as many this week.
"It was one hell of a run," said Verlander, who was drafted second overall by the Tigers in 2004 and helped them reach the World Series two years later. "From the Cinderella story of 2006 through the year-in, year-out juggernauts and going deep into the playoffs every year, and Mr. I was doing anything he could to put an unbelievable product on the field. What a time to be not only a player for the Tigers, but a fan. You said the glory days. It felt like that as a player, too. It was just so fun to be a part of it."
There was no nostalgia in Verlander's voice. He smiled, but not wistfully. He has moved on, six years removed from Detroit and arguably better than ever. He learned to harness his talent like never before with the data-driven Astros, with analytics that "went from like zero to 100 going from Detroit to Houston," he said. The Tigers have since closed the gap in this regard, but it's another reason to wonder what might have been.
Verlander, 40, has talked in passing about the idea of returning to Detroit to finish his career. While he's caught a second wind, it seems that ship has sailed. The Tigers just aren't good enough. They have become a big-league punching bag, such a pushover that even Scherzer sounded let down that a postponed game last weekend prevented him from making his return against the Braves: "I'd rather face a division opponent. The Braves are good. It's fun to face them. They're a challenge, I can beat them, they can beat me."
For Verlander, returning to Detroit feels less like coming home than it used to, more like revisiting a chapter of his career that's closed. He said he's "right in the thick of a brand new chapter with the Mets," after writing a memorable one with the Astros. The first chapter of his career was legendary in its own right, "but it ended and ended peacefully," Verlander said.
It ended blissfuly for Verlander that October. So it did for Scherzer two years later. For the Tigers and their fans, there's no end in sight. It might be painful if this baseball town wasn't so numb. As Verlander and Scherzer walked past photos of themselves in the hallways of Comerica on Tuesday, the memories were close enough to touch.
Scherzer smiled at the thought of his epic relief appearance in the 2013 ALDS, like he could still hear the crowd. He talked about "beating the A's and the Yankees, those incredible moments when you're pouring champagne on everybody after a series win." He credited Jim Leyland for turning him into the bulldog he is now by pushing him to go deeper into games and to stare down failure: "You don't see that attitude anymore, and that's something that's disappointing to me personally, looking at the game."
Looking back is easier these days for baseball fans in Detroit, when they're not just looking away. The future no longer shines like the past. Two aces are a reminder of what was, of "great teams and great players," said Scherzer. He said "the five years that I was here were arguably the five best years in the recent history for the Tigers," and he's right.
Trouble is, there's nothing recent about 2014.
