Big inning, RISP troubles keep Verlander's first Giants win out of reach

TORONTO -- Justin Verlander felt optimistic that a mechanical adjustment he made during his final start before the All-Star break would breed better success for him in the second half. But the results still weren’t there for him on Friday night.

Verlander couldn’t get out of the third inning in his first start in nine days, and the Giants’ offense went cold behind him, leading to a 4-0 series-opening loss to the American League East-leading Blue Jays at Rogers Centre.

Verlander gave up four runs on a season-high-matching nine hits over 2 2/3 innings, leaving him 0-8 with a 4.99 ERA on the season. He remains winless through his first 16 starts of the year, the longest single-season winless streak by a Giants starting pitcher in franchise history.

The three-time Cy Young winner topped out at 97 mph with his four-seam fastball, but he generated only five total swinging strikes and finished with no strikeouts for only the seventh time in his 20-year career (including the postseason).

“Stuff-wise, I’m still fairly optimistic, but I had a tough one today,” Verlander said. “Obviously, they found a way to put a lot of balls in play and found a lot of holes. The ones they did hit hard found corners. It was a tough one. But I’m still optimistic. I think about how the mechanical adjustments have helped my stuff. The velo is better. I think the breaking balls are sharper, all in all.”

Tristan Beck fired 4 1/3 scoreless innings in relief of Verlander to keep the Giants within striking distance, but they ended up being shut out despite outhitting the Blue Jays, 11-10. San Francisco -- continuing a troubling trend from the first half -- finished 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position, marking the first time since 1959 that the club recorded more than 10 hits in a game without scoring a run.

“I was looking at it the whole game,” said left fielder Heliot Ramos, who went 2-for-4 with a pair of singles. “It’s frustrating because I feel like we’re putting good at-bats together and everything together, but nothing is clicking. It’s the first game back. But I felt like we could have done better, for sure.”

Verlander threw two of his three career no-hitters at Rogers Centre -- including his most recent one on Sept. 1, 2019, as a member of the Astros -- but he has had a far tougher time neutralizing this iteration of the Blue Jays, who are tied for the highest batting average in the Majors (.259) and have the fewest strikeouts of any team this year.

Verlander coaxed an inning-ending double play from Bo Bichette to leave a pair of runners stranded in the bottom of the first, but he was tagged for four runs while grinding through a 33-pitch second inning. Toronto sent 10 batters to the plate during the decisive rally of the night, getting on the board behind Joey Loperfido’s RBI double down the right-field line before adding on via a two-run double from Will Wagner and an RBI single from Nathan Lukes.

“It was more putaway with two strikes,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Typically, he’s got something to get a swing-and-miss. He didn’t get any strikeouts. He limited the damage for the amount of baserunners he had there in less than three innings, but a couple key hits off of him and just really didn’t have a putaway pitch today.”

The Giants have lost each of Verlander’s past six starts, falling to 4-12 behind the 42-year-old right-hander this season, though their offense hasn’t given him much of a margin for error. San Francisco has scored only 26 total runs of support in Verlander’s 16 outings in 2025, tied for the third fewest among Major League pitchers with at least 15 starts this year.

“We haven’t given him much run support,” Melvin said. “We’ve been behind early on. It’d be nice to give him a nice lead and let him do his thing. The overall numbers aren’t horrible at this point. We don’t give much run support, and it seems like there are a few games here like tonight where we’ve gotten behind early.”

Ramos said the lack of help for Verlander has been weighing on the entire team, especially since the future Hall of Famer remains stuck on 262 career wins and hasn’t been able to make any progress in his historic quest for 300.

“We do want to make history for him,” Ramos said. “He’s the type of person that you want to go out there and play your 1,000 percent every time. He’s always giving his 100 percent whenever he’s out there, so we want to give that back to him and let him make history, because he deserves it. He has a great career. He’s a great pitcher. That’s what we want.”