Justin Verlander
Justin Verlander is the first active player to appear in my rankings, and his extended period of great pitching for the Tigers and the Astros has definitely earned him this honor.
Verlander pitched a couple of forgettable games for the Tigers in 2005, before being called up full-time in 2006, where immediately set the league on fire. He became the first rookie ever to win 10 games before the end of June, and he ended the season with the AL Rookie of the Year Award. He also made his first World Series appearance that year, but was terrible, giving up 12 hits and 10 runs in 11 innings, and being responsible for 2 losses.
He was pretty good in 2007, then had a major slump in 2008, but he finally found his form in 2009, when he led the league in wins and strikeouts while finishing 3rd in the Cy Young voting.
2011 is when he really made his mark. He led the league in wins and strikeouts again, but this time he also had the lowest ERA, earning him the pitching Triple Crown. Clayton Kershaw matched the feat in the NL, making it the first time since 1924 that each league had a Triple Crown pitcher in the same season.
He not only won the Triple Crown that year, he was also awarded the AL Cy Young award by unanimous vote, the 16th player ever to receive every first place vote, a club that would later be joined by Clayton Kershaw as well. He was also awarded the AL MVP award, the first pitcher in 19 years to earn it, which also made him the second pitcher in history to earn Rookie of the Year, MVP, and the Cy Young during their career, joining Don Newcombe.
The following year he finished #2 in ERA, while still leading the league in strikeouts and innings pitched, but lost in the closest Cy Young vote in history. He took it out on the rest of the AL in the playoffs, where he gave up only 2 runs in over 24 innings while striking out 25 and leading the Tigers to the World Series, but gave up 5 runs in 4 innings of his World Series game as the Tigers fell short again.
In the next season's playoffs he had his best performance to date, starting 3 games and giving up just one run while striking out 31 batters in 23 innings, but the Tigers only won one of those 3 starts, with the 2 losses both coming by a score of 1-0. Even though they did not reach the World Series, he was by far the best pitcher of the postseason.
A variety of injuries hampered him over the next two years, but in 2016 he was back at full strength, and he showed it by leading the league in strikeouts for the 4th time, and came in 2nd in the Cy Young voting again, this time in the 2nd-closest voting of all time, and it was also the first time in AL history that the player with the most 1st-place votes did not win the award.
Verlander was traded to the Houston Astros late in the 2017 season, where he gave up only 4 runs in his 5 regular season starts, before dominating his way through the playoffs once again, giving up only 4 runs in over 24 innings of work en route to his 3rd World Series appearance, where the Astros were able to defeat the Dodgers to earn their first and his first championship, and Verlander was named co-MVP along with Jose Altuve.
In his career, Verlander has led the league in strikeouts 4 times, had 3 Cy Young-quality seasons (though just one official award), 3 dominant playoff runs, an MVP award, and a World Series ring and MVP, and he is off to a great start again in 2018, so he may not be done climbing the list of all-time greats.
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