January 15: The Rockies have officially announced the signing.
January 7: The Rockies agree Michael Lorenzen one-year, $8MM contract, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports. The deal includes a $9MM club option for the 2027 season. Colorado has a 40-man cap space and will finalize the deal once Lorenzen passes his physical. He is represented by CAA Sports.
It’s the first MLB signing of the winter in Colorado, meaning it’s also Paul DePodesta’s first notable signing as head of baseball operations. (The Red Sox are the only team not to sign a major league free agent this offseason.) It could be the first of several additions to the rebuilding team. General manager Josh Byrnes said this week that they hope to bring in two experienced players.
The Rockies rarely add to their rotation through free agency. First time they’ve added a free agent starter with $5MM+ guaranteed since Kyle Kendrick signing in 2015. Coors Field is obviously not the preferred location for many pitchers. A seven-year streak of finishing fourth or fifth in the NL West doesn’t help.
One thing they can certainly give a chance. Lorenzen will be a sixth starter or swing arm for most teams. You’ll find a guaranteed place to roam in Colorado, where he lives in the background Kyle Freeland like their strongest arms. The 34-year-old righty spent the last season and a half with the Royals. He has worked in the backcourt for Kansas City for most of the season, including 26 starts last year. Lorenzen posted a 4.64 earned run average over 141 2/3 innings.
A multi-inning reliever early in his career with the Reds, Lorenzen prioritized the rotation when he hits free agency after the 2021 season. He got several one-year deals that gave him back-office work. This is the fifth consecutive season in which he has controlled one year of his MLB contract. The deals are all guaranteed between $4.5MM and $8.5MM and come with five different teams: the Angels, Tigers, Rangers, and Royals. He has been traded twice and is now on his seventh team overall.
Lorenzen has gone over 130 innings over the past three seasons. He’s been on the injured list four years in a row, but a shoulder strain in 2022 kept him sidelined. His recent bout with IL was due to minor issues: groin, hamstring, neck and oblique strains – none of which cost him more than a month.
The 6’3″ righty works with one of the deepest arms of any pitcher in the MLB. Of Statcast’s seven different tracking metrics, none of them are used more than a quarter of the time. His four-seam fastball checks out at around 94 MPH. He also throws a sinker, changeup, and four breaking pitches (slider, curveball, cutter, sweeper). Nothing stands out like mixing and matching, but you can produce decent results by mixing and matching. Lorenzen has a 4.10 ERA with a minuscule 19.3% strikeout rate compared to an 8.7% walk percentage over the past four seasons.
Anything close to that production could make him one of Colorado’s best pitchers. Freeland was their only pitcher to make more than six starts and allowed less than 6.33 earned runs per nine innings. The rotation’s 6.65 ERA was historically bad. German Marquez he is not expected to return in free agency. Antonio Senzatela he was demoted to the bullpen late in the season and is expected to be out for a long time.
Freeland and Lorenzen are locked into the top two spots of the rotation. Ryan Feltner, Chase the Dollar, Gabriel Hughes, Bradley Blalock, Tanner Gordon, McCade Brown and a waiver request Keegan Thompson other options on the 40-man roster. Feltner is the only player on the team to have MLB success, and he is coming off an injury-riddled season. Dollander is a former top 10 player who held his own on the road but was terrible at Coors Field as a rookie. They are penciled in for a replacement for now, and the starting five job will be open if they fail to bring in someone else this offseason.
Lorenzen will eat innings and lift the floor when he takes the ball. He’s not the type of striker who will get a huge trade return, but the Rox will be hoping for a first half that allows them to turn him around with the hope of a lottery ticket at the deadline.
Photo courtesy of Jay Biggerstaff, Imagn Images.
