The Colorado Rockies don’t always have it easy when it comes to getting pitchers to join them and pitch a mile above sea level.
On Wednesday night, though, they got a solid starting pitcher from the Kansas City Royals to come aboard in free agency.
The new guy is Michael Lorenzen. His contract was reported as one year for $8 million, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, with a $9 million player option for 2027.
Passan also reports that Lorenzen will be a starter in Colorado, which might’ve been one of the selling points. Other clubs may have been targeting Lorenzen as a reliever.
The 34-year old is coming off a season in which he pitched in 27 games for the Royals (26 starts) and had a 4.64 ERA.
His career ERA in MLB is 4.08.
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Lorenzen had a 3.31 ERA in the 2024 season split between the Rangers and Royals, so he’s not far removed from being very effective.
In 2025, his strikeouts per nine actually improved (8.1) and his walks per nine dropped (2.5). But he gave up 1.6 home runs per nine, a worse ratio than he has had in all but one season of his career, and that did him in.
Clearly, Colorado isn’t a great place to avoid giving up solid slugging to hitters. But if Lorenzen can regress toward the mean of his career on that while maintaining some of his strikeout and walk improvements, he can still be a solid pitcher for the Rockies.
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‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.sportingnews.com ’
