Jeff Passan of ESPN reported Wednesday evening<\/a> that the Rockies and right-handed starting pitcher Michael Lorenzen have agreed to one-year, $8 million deal that will add much-needed veteran depth to the rotation. The contract also has a $9 million club option for 2027.<\/p>\nLorenzen, 34, was originally a first-round selection in the 2013 MLB Draft by the Cincinnati Reds. He attended California State University, Fullerton.<\/p>\n
Something of a two-way player, Lorenzen made multiple starts in the outfield for the Reds in addition to his starting pitching duties. He was a career .233\/.282\/.429 hitter with seven home runs, 24 RBIs, and even five stolen bases over 133 at-bats before the adoption of the universal designated hitter in Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n
Lorenzen spent his first seven big league seasons with the Reds, working largely as a reliever outside of his 2015 rookie campaign. Since leaving Cincinnati he has worked almost exclusively as a starting pitcher and has spent time with the Los Angeles Angels, Detroit Tigers, Texas Rangers, and most recently the Kansas City Royals.<\/p>\n
While he isn\u2019t much of a strikeout pitcher at this point in his career, Lorenzen does well when it comes to limiting walks and hard contact. He gets solid results from an extensive arsenal of pitches.<\/p>\n
In 2025 with the Royals he threw a low-to-mid 90s four-seam fastball, a sinker, a changeup with some armside break, both a sweeper and slider, a cutter, and a looping 12-6 curveball. In addition, he posted a 4.64 ERA with a 4.59 FIP over 27 appearances\u201426 of which were starts\u2014over 141 2\/3 innings. Worth noting, he also led the league in wild pitches.<\/p>\n
With a 4.08 career ERA over 11 seasons, Lorenzen is far from a flashy signing. However, he represents a solid veteran presence in a rotation that still has plenty of holes to fill<\/a> before the start of the 2026 regular season. If he performs well, he could also be traded at the deadline for more organizational building blocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Colorado Rockies finally broke the winter silence with their first Major League free agent signing under their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2400],"tags":[5,535,50,4259,38706,4,12123,536],"class_list":{"0":"post-510930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cincinnati-reds","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cincinnati","10":"tag-cincinnati-reds","11":"tag-cincinnatireds","12":"tag-colorado-rockies-news","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-purple-row-community","15":"tag-reds"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115858125886013922","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}