Michael Lorenzen stays on point as Tigers wrap up trip with shutout win
Chris McCosky
Kansas City, Mo. — Michael Lorenzen came to the dugout after dispatching the Royals in the seventh inning and threw his arms up in mock disgust as manager AJ Hinch extended the job-well-done handshake. Meaning his day was done.
"Our consecutive streak of pitchers wanting to stay in the game is still alive," Hinch said with a smile after the Tigers put the wraps on a successful road trip with a methodical 3-0 win over the Kansas City Royals Thursday at Kauffman Stadium. "He knew what was coming. That's kind of an inside joke for me and him. I'm surprised he came in the (dugout) entrance he did. He could've gone in the other one.
"I still would have found him and taken him out. It's fun to see him happy at the end of his outing because of the way he pitched and how our team played."
The Tigers did what they were supposed to. They took three out of four from the second-worst team in baseball and are bringing a 5-2 record home from this road trip to Seattle and Kansas City.
"Good trip," Hinch said. "Coming out of the break you never quite know how the guys are going to get back up and running. We came out aggressively in Seattle and we've continued that here. Our guys are understanding that every day is really important. They are seeing what's possible, how you win the series and win the week.
"We did both."
Lorenzen, like Eduardo Rodriguez Wednesday night, was pitching with a lot of eyes on him. He’s likely drawing interest from contending teams ahead of the Aug. 1 trade deadline and his value is increasing with every start.
All of which he is doing his level best to ignore.
"I have to get outs," Lorenzen said. "My job is to put our team in the best position to win. That's hard enough. If I have all that clutter in my mind I'm not going to be successful. You have to be mentally tough enough to block that out."
How's this for being locked in? With seven shutout innings Thursday, he extended his career-best scoreless innings streak to 21⅔ innings. That's the longest active streak in the big leagues and the longest streak by a Tigers pitcher since Michael Fulmer's 33-inning streak in 2016.
"There's just a different confidence when you develop more and more skill," Lorenzen said. "I know I have developed the skills I need, just cleaning up the command with the slider has been huge."
Lorenzen threw 24 sliders at the Royals and also mixed in 10 sweepers. He got five swinging strikes on 14 swings and four called strikes. The success of that pitch also got them off his four-seam fastball and changeup, making those two pitches more effective.
"It's not just trying to land it in the zone but actually trying to execute it in and out of the strike zone," he said. "Being able to execute it strike to ball (starting in the zone and landing outside the zone), and down and away so I'm not giving up seven two-strike base hits because they're backing up and I'm just trying to throw it in the strike zone.
"Being able to execute it out of the zone is a big deal."
Especially with how aggressive the Royals' hitters were in the entire series. Lorenzen was able to use their aggressiveness to his advantage, working the margins of the strike zone and keeping his pitches off the hitter's barrels. He limited them to three hits.
"With the amount of strikes I've been known to throw, teams are going to come out aggressive," Lorenzen said. "If you can leverage that into weak contact, you can have some success. And our defense did a really good job behind me."
Lorenzen, who especially credited the play of second baseman Andy Ibanez, who had five assists in the game, walked one and struck out three, but he got one weak-contact out after another.
"That win is really kind of on his back," catcher Eric Haase said of Lorenzen. "With how hot it was (heat index pushing the temperatures well into the 90s), he kept us off our feet. He was attacking the zone. I know he would've liked to punch some more guys out. There was a lot of opportunity. But at the same time, he kept pounding the zone and got a ton of weak contact."
The Royals put 20 balls in play against him with an average exit velocity of 87.3 mph. Lorenzen had one long inning, a 26-pitch second. But he balanced that with a nine-pitch third and a seven-pitch sixth. He finished his seven innings in 89 pitches.
"He'll have a mishap every now and then," Hinch said. "But he's done a really good job of getting himself back to pitching after a misfire or if he goes 0-2 to a walk like he did against Nick Pratto. His mentality has been excellent going on a couple of months now where he's been able to reset, get back into the zone and make competent pitches."
Lorenzen stranded a runner at third in the second inning and got a boost from his defense in the sixth. Kyle Isbel ripped a ball into the right-center field gap and tried to stretch a double into a triple. The Tigers cut him down at third on a textbook relay — from right fielder Zach McKinstry to shortstop Javier Báez to third baseman Nick Maton.
"Just an overaggressive play by their guy and we stayed in the play," Hinch said. "They were looking for any spark they could find and that can create an opportunity for them to try to do too much. We were able to execute the play."
Lefty Tyler Holton pitched a clean eighth inning and needed only five pitches to do it. Jason Foley closed it out in the ninth.
"We're just playing better baseball," said Haase, who along with Ibanez lined two-out, RBI singles to give the Tigers an early lead in the second inning. "We're playing a lot cleaner baseball. And our starting pitching has been real good and the bullpen shows it. They are coming in throwing strikes, usually with a lead. The dynamic of the game changes drastically."
The Tigers (44-52) are eight games under .500 for the first time since June 8.
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @cmccosky