Justin Verlander joined a very small group of pitchers in Major League Baseball history Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
The San Francisco pitcher struck out three in the opening inning of the Giants’ 8-0 loss to the Washington Nationals. The third strikeout made him just the 10th pitcher in big-league history to record at least 3,500 strikeouts in his career.<\/p>\n
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The three-time Cy Young Award winner received a big ovation from the home crowd at Oracle Park as he closed the inning and slowly walked back to the dugout before tipping his cap.<\/p>\n
Verlander is now 10th on MLB\u2019s all-time strikeouts list, nine away from matching Walter Johnson. Nolan Ryan is the all-time leader with 5,714. Verlander is the active leader in the big leagues. Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw are the only other active players in the top 30.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI was happy to get there, happy to have the moment with the fans,\u201d Verlander said, via NBC Sports Bay Area. \u201cIt\u2019s cool. It\u2019s a cool milestone, something that I really appreciate what it\u2019s taken to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Despite the historic start, Verlander struggled the rest of the way against the Nationals, a team he was previously unbeaten against in his career. The 42-year-old allowed 11 hits and five runs in five innings. The Nationals put up four runs in the second inning, thanks to a two-RBI double from James Wood and a two-run homer from CJ Abrams.<\/p>\n
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The win was the second straight for the Nationals, who now sit at 47-70. The Giants are 59-59 and are third in the NL West. Verlander holds just a 1-9 record this year, his first with the Giants, in 20 starts and nearly 100 innings pitched. He signed a one-year, $15 million deal to join the Giants this season after a short run back with the Houston Astros.<\/p>\n
San Francisco will be back in action Tuesday night to begin a three-game series with the San Diego Padres. Verlander is slated to make his next start Aug. 16 against the Tampa Bay Rays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Justin Verlander joined a very small group of pitchers in Major League Baseball history Sunday afternoon. The San…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":135732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[6597,7480,2382,2044,1884,5920,1266,1306,2750,81742,62,8330,1289,24890,67,132,68,1291],"class_list":["post-135731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-cj-abrams","tag-clayton-kershaw","tag-houston-astros","tag-justin-verlander","tag-major-league-baseball","tag-max-scherzer","tag-mlb","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-san-francisco","tag-sf-giants","tag-sports","tag-strikeout","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-the-giants","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-washington-nationals"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115007509422523003","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}