Justin Verlander reveals plans for his MLB future after turning season around originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Giants starter Justin Verlander has turned things around in his age-42 MLB season, and he has no intention of slowing down any time soon.

After another dominant outing Wednesday, in which he spun seven scoreless innings in the Giants’ 5-1, extra-innings win over the Arizona Diamondbacks, Verlander was asked if he plans to keep going in 2026.

“Next year? I mean, I’d like to, yeah,” Verlander told reporters at Chase Field. “I would hope that somebody would offer me a contract now, showing that I can turn it around and still pitch at a high level.”

After a rough start to his first season with the Giants, Verlander now has a 2.17 ERA in his last 11 starts.

Verlander, who turns 43 in February, will be an unrestricted free agent entering the 2026 campaign after signing a one-year deal with the Giants.

Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey even admitted Verlander exceeded his expectations when he brought the veteran pitcher to San Francisco this past offseason. And Posey’s open to the idea of keeping him around.

“Yeah, definitely,” Posey said Thursday morning on KNBR’s “Murph & Markus.” “It’s something we’ll have to discuss, but for a multitude of reasons, he’s been a great teammate. He’s helped some of our younger guys learn how to prepare and then he just sets an example by going out and performing and continuing to show up.

“So that’s definitely something we’ll be open to.”

After Wednesday’s showing, Verlander joined seven-time Cy Young winner Roger Clemens as the only pitchers age 42 or older to allow one or fewer runs over four consecutive starts (h/t Sarah Langs).

Verlander’s 3-10 record certainly doesn’t paint the whole picture, as either the Giants’ bullpen or lack of run support has let him down.

The Giants (76-76) still are chasing the New York Mets for the final NL wild card spot, tied with the Cincinnati Reds (76-76) and one-half game behind the Diamondbacks (77-76).

San Francisco can thank Verlander for helping keep the team afloat, and his presence on and off the mound hopes to continue to inspire a postseason push.

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Dave Roberts started out of the dugout with a walk.

Once Blake Snell caught his gaze, it turned into a trot.

With two out in the seventh inning, and Snell trying to put the finishing touches on his best performance in a Dodgers uniform, Roberts appeared to be coming to the mound after a pair of walks to turn to his shaky bullpen with a three-run lead.

As he usually does when removing a pitcher, his gait was slow — at least, initially.

Once Snell saw him coming, however, Roberts picked up his pace — as he will sometimes do when electing to leave a pitcher in the game.

This time, it was the latter.

After a brief discussion between manager and starting pitcher, Snell stayed in.

Five throws later, the $180-million offseason signee rewarded the decision, striking out Otto Kemp with a 95-mph fastball to put an emphatic ending on his scoreless seven-inning start, one that lifted the Dodgers to a 5-0 win over the Philadelphia Phillies.

Entering Wednesday, all the discussion around the Dodgers had centered on the bullpen. The slumping unit was coming off two of its worst performances of the season. The majority of Roberts’ pregame address with reporters was spent dissecting how to fix it.

Read more:Hernández: If Shohei Ohtani is open to playing in the outfield, the Dodgers have failed him

“Before the results, has to be confidence,” Roberts said, comparing the relief corps’ struggles to the second-half scuffles that the offense only recently emerged from. “It's just kind of trying to reset a mentality, a mindset and expect that things happen. … You can't chase a zero in an inning until you execute the first pitch, and then keep going like that. And I think that right now you can see that they're kind of trying a little too hard.”

On Wednesday night, however, Snell made their job easy.

Efficient from the start with the kind of aggressive, attacking game plan he had acknowledged was missing in his last three outings, Snell went to work quickly against the Phillies, retiring the side on eight pitches (and two strikeouts) in the first inning, en route to setting down the first eight batters he faced.

Brief trouble arose in the third, when Bryson Stott and Harrison Bader had back-to-back singles.

But then Snell froze Kyle Schwarber with a curveball, one of the seven punchouts he recorded with the pitch. He had a season-high 12 strikeouts on the night.

And after that, the Phillies didn’t put another runner aboard until the seventh, with Snell breezing through the next 12 batters.

In the meantime, the Dodgers built a lead. Freddie Freeman homered to lead off the second. Ben Rortvedt (starting his third straight game behind the plate, even with Dalton Rushing back from a leg injury) added an RBI single later in the inning, following an Andy Pages hit-and-run single that put runners on the corners.

Another run came around in the fourth, after Pages worked a two-out walk, stole second, took third on a wild pickoff throw and scored on an RBI single from Kiké Hernández (who played third base in place of Max Muncy, who still felt “fuzzy” on Tuesday from a hit-by-pitch he took to the head over the weekend).

And from there, the Dodgers watched Snell cruise, with the $182-million offseason acquisition attacking the corners of the strike zone while also inducing misses on 24 of 54 swings.

The night culminated in the seventh, after walks to Nick Castellanos and Max Kepler drew Roberts out of the dugout. In the bullpen, left-hander Alex Vesia was getting warm. For a brief moment, it appeared the game would be in the hands of the relievers.

Snell had other ideas, signaling Roberts to hurry to the mound in the middle of his walk before seemingly pleading his case to stay in.

Read more:Plaschke: Dodgers are blowing their bye, and hopes for deep playoff run, thanks to familiar issue

Whatever he said, Roberts listened.

Snell stayed on the rubber. A crowd of 50,859 roared in approval.

Against his final batter, Kemp, Snell fell behind, missing low with a changeup before pulling a fastball wide. Undeterred, he went back on the attack, getting one foul ball with a heater on the inner half, then another with a curveball that leaked over the plate. The count was 2-and-2. Chavez Ravine rose to its feet.

The next pitch — Snell’s 112th of the night — was another fastball, this time on the upper, outside corner at 95.3 mph. Kemp swung through it. Snell screamed and pumped his fist. In the dugout, Roberts raised an arm in the air, then began clapping as Snell walked off to a raucous ovation.

The next two innings were refreshingly simple. Alex Vesia retired the side in the top of the eighth. The Dodgers made it a five-run lead by scoring twice in the bottom half of the frame, including on Shohei Ohtani’s 51st home run of the season. Embattled closer Tanner Scott spun a stress-free ninth, pitching three consecutive scoreless outings for the first time since early July.

Come October, that’s the kind of blueprint the Dodgers (who maintained a two-game lead in the National League West over the San Diego Padres) will have to try and replicate.

Their bullpen still needs fixing. Their relief issues aren’t solved. But more gems like Snell’s would certainly help.

Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

One night after their pitching piggyback was a roaring success, the Mets’ rotation reality smacked them once again on Wednesday. On David Peterson’s turn, the Mets were back to their normal starter usage – one guy, his game. Let’s just say the results were not nearly as encouraging as those delivered by the Clay Holmes-Sean Manaea combo in the opener of this series against the Padres, and now thorny questions loom about Peterson going forward.

Peterson didn’t exactly get shelled, but he didn’t exactly do anything that should make the Mets feel comfortable about giving him an October start, either. You know, if the Mets can actually make the playoffs.

Peterson allowed six runs in five innings, the big blow coming on a Manny Machado grand slam in the fifth inning that tilted a tie game. The Padres went on to win, 7-4, and the Mets bungled a chance to put more distance between them and the Diamondbacks in the race for the third NL Wild Card. Arizona had lost earlier in the day, just as the Mets’ grounds crew was taking the tarp off the diamond at Citi Field, so the Mets still own a 1.5-game lead.

Again, Peterson didn’t get mauled – the Padres loaded the bases in the fifth on a hit batsman, a walk and a bunt single by Luis Arraez before Machado’s slam. And they got a run in the second on two bloop hits sandwiched around a groundout. Still, Peterson’s final line was ugly, in line with much of his poor second half. In 11 starts since making his first All-Star team, Peterson has a 5.71 ERA.

“It’s obviously tough when you know what you’re capable of,” Peterson admitted of his struggles. “You're gonna go through times where it's not going exactly how you want it to, whether it's baseball or whether it's something that you're not necessarily executing. But you know you can't hold onto it. Look at it as objectively as possible and correct things that need to be worked on and move forward.”

With the playoffs looming, Peterson must revert back to the ace-type that he was earlier in the season if the Mets hope to reach October and go on a run similar to last season. And the Mets have to help him get there.

“When he’s at his best, he’s getting a lot of ground balls,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “He’s inducing weak contact. He’s using all of his pitches when he’s ahead and he’s able to get swings and misses with the secondary pitchers. And we haven’t seen that for quite a bit.”

Still, Mendoza said, he trusts Peterson going forward.

“We trust him and all of the guys here,” Mendoza said. “We only got, what, 10 more (games) to go in the regular season. We need him. He’s been a big part of this team. But it’s been a struggle for him. We want to do everything moving forward to put guys in position to help us win baseball games.

“We’re counting on him.”

The Machado home run came on a 3-2 curveball that Machado swatted for his 14th career grand slam. Asked how he felt about the pitch when he threw it, Peterson replied, “Felt fine about it. I shook to that pitch and felt like I threw a good, competitive pitch down and away. And he’s a really good hitter and he was able to give them a gap there in the game.”

That is where the outing spun out of control for Peterson. His season has, too. As recently as Aug. 6, Peterson had a season ERA below 3.00 (2.98). It now sits a full run higher.  He was one of the few reliable sources of length in the rotation, too, a problem that’s plagued the Mets all year. Now it plagues Peterson, too. 

Wednesday’s loss dropped him to 9-6 and was the third time in his last seven starts he’s given up six or more runs. Earlier this season, he was working on a since-dead streak of 56 consecutive starts in which he did not allow more than five runs, according to the Mets.

Still, Mendoza confirmed postgame that Peterson will indeed make his next start. Would Peterson perhaps be a consideration for some kind of piggybacking scenario, too, at some point?

“We just got done with this turn,” Mendoza said. “We’re already doing it with two guys.”

But, the manager added, “I mean, everything’s on the table because we’ve got to win baseball games.”

Starting soon. They had won two in a row before losing Wednesday. Was that just a quick palate cleanser before another course of losing? The sands in the 162-game hourglass of the season are rapidly running out.

In a season in which there are no behemoths in either league, it’d be a shame if the Mets aren’t able to take their chances in October. They’ve got to get there first, though. And they’ll need a better David Peterson to do that.

“We’re looking at inches,” Carlos Mendoza said. 

That’s how close Juan Soto came to tying Wednesday’s game against the Padres. 

After Francisco Alvarez lifted an opposite-field homer to make it a one-run ballgame, the Mets' slugger stepped to the plate in the bottom of the seventh with a man on and one out, facing San Diego’s All-Star reliever Mason Miller. 

Soto had already gone deep once in the ballgame, tying his career-high with 41 blasts. 

After battling to a 2-2 count against the hard-throwing right-hander, the sweet-swinging lefty laced a 102.6 mph fastball for a long fly ball deep down into the left field corner that sent the Citi Field crowd into a frenzy. 

It came oh so close to being a game-tying two-run blast and Soto’s signature Mets moment down the stretch in the playoff push, but upon further review, the ball dropped in just shy of the foul pole.

“I knew it had enough power behind it to go out,” Soto said. “I just didn’t how long it was going to stay fair, it was fair most of the time and then at the end it just hooked a little more -- it was just a long strike.”

Miller would get the best of Soto one pitch later, freezing him with a nasty slider on the corner. 

The 26-year-old found himself with an opportunity for redemption a few innings later, though, as Brett Baty led off the ninth with a single and Francisco Lindor drew a two-out walk to again bring him to the plate as the tying run. 

Soto was in another 2-2 count when he laced a 100.5 mph comebacker back up the middle at San Diego closer Robert Suarez, which he was able to glove down before throwing to first to end the ballgame.  

Just like that, the Mets’ lead for the third wild card spot is back down to 1.5 games over the Diamondbacks and 2.0 over the Reds and Giants with 10 games to play. 

“We just have to try to be a little bit more consistent,” Soto said. “We still have a playoff spot, so we’re definitely still in this, but we have to get going today because tomorrow is going to be too late; we have to get going right now.”

The Yankees had to make up for a lackluster starter's performance again, but Trent Grisham's two homers powered New York to a 10-5 win over the Twins on Wednesday night in Minnesota.

Here are the takeaways....

-After scoring 10 runs on Tuesday, the Yankees picked up where they left off thanks to Aaron Judge. The defending AL MVP hit a two-out double, and Cody Bellinger followed with a single that Judge was able to get home ahead of the throw from left field. Grisham's career year continued, as his second-inning solo shot gave the Yankees a 2-1 lead. 

-For the second straight game, a Yankees starter could not make it through five with a big lead. Luis Gil, starting for the first time since throwing six no-hit innings against the Red Sox, was not as sharp on Wednesday. The Twins drew a one-out walk and back-to-back singles (with a throwing error on a pickoff thrown in) allowed Minnesota to push across a run in the second inning. Then, with two outs, Gil threw a wild pitch that Ben Rice should have blocked, but the Twins took advantage to take a 2-1 lead.

Bellinger would hit a two-run shot in the ninth to put the game away.

After the Yankees tied it back up, Gil unraveled again in the third. Byron Buxton led off with a double and then Gil hit Austin Martin to put two runners on with no outs. But Gil hunkered down and got a double play and a ground out to end the threat. Minnesota would get to Gil again in the fifth. They pushed across three runs on four hits and one walk, which could have been more if not for some nifty defense by Jazz Chisholm Jr. and was pulled for Fernando Cruz. Cruz got Royce Lewis to line out to end the inning.

Gil went just 4.2 innings (85 pitches/54 strikes), allowing five runs (four earned) on nine hits, two walks, while striking out just two batters.

-Aaron Boone had an unconventional lineup on Wednesday. With Judge DHing, Giancarlo Stanton was relegated to the bench as Jasson Dominguez took over in left field. The young outfielder went 1-for-3, with two stolen bases but his RBI double in the fourth gave the Yankees a 3-2 lead. His steal of second in the eighth and getting to third on the throwing error led to a much-needed insurance run.

Jose Caballero started at short in place of Anthony Volpe, who went 2-for-4 on Tuesday, and went 0-for-3 with a walk, a stolen base and a run scored.

-Grisham has 33 home runs and 70 RBI for the season. It's his eighth long ball in his last 19 games and 10 in his last 22. 

-In relief of Gil, the Yankees' bullpen was solid. The combination of Cruz, Devin Williams, Luke Weaver and Camilo Doval went 4.1 innings without allowing a run on two hits and striking six batters. 

Game MVP: Trent Grisham

Grisham's two blasts and four RBI helped the Yankees clinch the series win.

Highlights

Jasson Dominguez puts the Yankees back on top! pic.twitter.com/IMRpI0EsIi

— Yankees Videos (@snyyankees) September 18, 2025

33 homers on the season for Trent Grisham! pic.twitter.com/G2Rs3VDoAA

— Yankees Videos (@snyyankees) September 18, 2025

What's next

The Yankees head to Baltimore to take on the division rival Orioles for a four-game series starting Thursday. First pitch is set for 7:15 p.m.

Max Fried (17-5, 3.03 ERA) will take the mound against Cade Povich (3-7, 5.05 ERA).