Houston Astros pitcher Justin Verlander won his third American League Cy Young Award on Thursday, joining a distinguished club with fewer than a dozen members throughout baseball history. He did so unanimously. And he did so under unprecedented circumstances — as a 39-year-old coming off Tommy John surgery, which kept him off a major league mound for most of the past two years. It was all rooted in positive thinking. When Verlander decided to surgically repair a torn ulnar collateral ligament in September 2020, he thought not about his age but about a percentage: 89%. That, he told MLB Network before being announced […]