From a no-hitter to his worst stretch of the season: How Michael Lorenzen plans to rebound for the Phillies

ST. LOUIS — When Michael Lorenzen was a young pitcher with the Cincinnati Reds, he would tinker. He wasn’t satisfied with his results. He posted earned run averages of 5.40 in his rookie season of 2015, 2.88 in his sophomore year, and 4.45 in 2017. He couldn’t figure out why he was struggling, or how to find consistency.

He assumed he was doing something wrong. Lorenzen remembers one night in St. Louis in 2017 when he stayed up until 4 a.m., poring over a book by renowned pitching coach Tom House with hopes of finding an answer on how to fix his mechanics. He pitched a hitless inning against the Cardinals a few hours earlier, but that didn’t leave him satisfied.

“I literally had no idea what I was doing,” Lorenzen said. “I was in my third season in the big leagues, and I had no idea what I was doing.”

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He wishes someone could have told him he was a pitcher whose outings would at times be swayed by luck. Lorenzen pitches to contact. He induces a lot of ground balls and fly balls. It can make his numbers swing wildly.

This season has been a good example of that. Just before the Phillies acquired Lorenzen from the Detroit Tigers at the trade deadline, he was coming off a career month with a 1.14 ERA in July. In June, he had a 5.30 ERA. In May? A 1.95 ERA. In April? A 7.07 ERA. Is this all due to luck? No. But it impacts Lorenzen more than pitchers who live and die by the strikeout.

This is a tough existence to navigate, and right now, Lorenzen is in the throes of it. In the five starts since his no-hitter on Aug. 9, he has allowed 23 earned runs in 26 innings for a 7.96 ERA, with 37 hits, 11 walks, and only 14 strikeouts. There are a few non-luck factors to consider. Lorenzen is pitching in a tougher division in the NL East than he was with the Tigers in the AL Central. His walk rate has risen and his strikeout rate has dropped in the second half. He’s giving up more contact, and has had trouble finishing batters with two strikes.

But despite that, he does not feel like the results speak to how he has pitched. Over those five starts, he has gone from baseball history — cleats in Cooperstown — to the bullpen, a place he didn’t want to return to in the first place.

Lorenzen, 31, spent most of his big league career in the bullpen. He was a reliever at Cal State Fullerton. Most starters are routine-oriented and don’t feel they have time to prepare to come out of the bullpen, but that has never been a problem for him.

His velocity ticks up when he pitches in relief. He is able to get away with mistakes that he might not be able to when he’s facing a lineup multiple times. He is already at a career-high 148⅔ innings and we’re halfway through September. This is all to say that he gets why the Phillies are moving him to the bullpen, and he wants to help. But it’s not a place he’d like to stay long-term.

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“They’d use me all the time,” Lorenzen said of his years with the Reds. “I’d throw the eighth inning of a game, and the next day I’d throw 2⅓. It was always a lot of different roles for me. I would make starts in September. I had a four-inning save one year.

“It was that way for seven years. I think they liked that about me, but arbitration didn’t care about any of that. So for me, it was like, I’m throwing my body through the wringer, and in arbitration, none of it mattered. So that’s where it’s tough. These teams claim that they love versatility, but they never pay for it. So why would a player ever commit to doing that?”

In Lorenzen’s case, it’s because he wants to win. On Sunday morning, a few hours before the game against the Cardinals, he stopped by manager Rob Thomson’s office. Thomson had just announced that the right-handed pitcher would be piggybacking behind Cristopher Sánchez on Tuesday in Atlanta, but Lorenzen wanted to make sure his manager knew he was available to pitch as soon as possible.

“I told him what I have to offer the team,” Lorenzen said. “I told him, ‘I haven’t thrown for eight days. So if you need me to come out of the ‘pen today, I’ll do it. Whenever you feel like you need me, don’t hesitate to let me know. And I’ll help you out.’

“In a situation like this, where you’re playing for a team that was in the World Series last year, and all of the guys are fully bought-in to win, I’m like, ‘Hey, I don’t care what role I have. I don’t care how this all plays out. Let’s go out and let’s win.’”

Lorenzen is at his best when he has faith. He is a devout Christian, so for him, that means faith in God. But it also means faith in himself, faith in his pitches, and faith in his outfielders and infielders behind him.

The past five starts have been frustrating because, for the most part, he has felt good. His stuff has been good. But his strikeout rate has dropped to 11.5% and his walk rate has risen to 9.0%. Yet he feels the numbers have been a little fluky.

By Lorenzen’s Sept. 5 start in San Diego, an 8-0 loss, his stress level had reached a new high. He was cruising, allowing two hits through three innings, and then allowed a solo home run to Fernando Tatis Jr. in the fourth. Two more runs scored on a fielder’s choice and an error a few batters later.

In the sixth, he encountered an “absolute nightmare” that resulted in four runs. In order, he gave up a walk, a ground single, a walk, an RBI ground single, a two-run line single, another walk, and a run-scoring force out before getting out of the inning on two flies to deep center.

“That’s where all of that weight hits you all at once,” Lorenzen said. “The nightmare that you were afraid of, happened. But looking back on it, that was a good thing for me. Me and my wife, Cassi, had a great conversation after the game. We looked into it, and we were like, ‘What’s at the root of all of this stress? What is at the root of it all?’”

They came to the conclusion that Lorenzen was overthinking. He was looking for stability in things he couldn’t control.

“I’ve basically played on one-year deals for nine seasons,” he said. “Pre-arb, you’re trying to prove yourself to stay. In arbitration, they’re all one-year deals, basically. And then you get to free agency, and you get on these one-year deals, and you have to prove yourself, every single year, every outing, for nine years. There hasn’t been a time for me where I’m like, ‘Oh, I have three years here, and this is what I’m doing.’

“If that were the case, when I go out and pitch, if I have a bad outing, it’d be fine. Move on. Fill up the zone. Trust your stuff. But for me, every start counts toward my next year. Every start, every time, I’m being evaluated. It adds so much [pressure]. Really just trusting God to — I know he’s going to be there. I don’t need a multiyear deal to pitch with peace. But that’s what God is kind of showing me — you’re really clinging to a multiyear deal. Stability in a contract.

“Looking inward, every time I take the ball, I think, ‘If I had that guy’s deal, I would take the ball and fill up the zone and be fearless.’ Because I don’t have to do anything. It’s done. But why can’t I go out there and do that now? So that’s been a really good thing for me.”

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He went into his next start with a single intention: to throw every pitch with “full trust.” Lorenzen realized that when he wasn’t doing that; he’d nibble, and hitters would take. He’d find himself in unfavorable counts.

So, against the Braves on Sept. 11, he tried to stay in the strike zone. His final line wasn’t pretty — four earned runs in five innings, but he got the win in the Phillies’ 7-5 victory. He gave up two home runs to Matt Olson, but he could live with that. His stuff, his body, and his mind felt good.

“You’ve got to trust what you’re doing,” he said. “It’s exactly what I did in the no-hitter, in the last few innings. Because I knew my pitch count was so high, I was basically trying to give it up. I was like, ‘Go ahead, give it up, because if you pitch around guys and you’re worried about contact, you’re going to be out of this game in the seventh and the eighth.’

“Just get it over with, throw it in the strike zone, and whatever happens, happens. I’m going to bed at night, giving up six in five innings, or whatever it may be, not happy about it, but trusting that the way I threw the ball. It easily could have gone the other way, too.”

Lorenzen thinks this mindset will help him down the stretch. He believes he is a better pitcher when he’s not feeling the weight of every outing. He looks back at that time in 2017 when he stayed up reading House books, and he sees growth. He knows now that tinkering isn’t the answer. But there is still more room for growth.

“Of course, I want to finish the year with a low 3.00 ERA,” Lorenzen said. “But to go from the very top — being able to throw a no-hitter — to throwing the worst baseball I have all year, for five straight starts, it’s really made me trust myself. It’s made me look in the mirror and grow as a person. Learning how to handle that has been good for me.”

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