Michael Lorenzen Reportedly Seeking Two-Year Deal

With spring training fully underway, right-hander Michael Lorenzen remains unsigned and in search of a new club for the upcoming 2024 season. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reports that the 32-year-old righty has been searching for a two-year contract and is continuing to focus his efforts on landing a multi-year pact.

After a lengthy run as a setup man in the Reds’ bullpen, Lorenzen has signed one-year deals to work as a starter in each of the past two offseasons. He landed with the Angels on a $6.75MM deal in 2022 and pitched for the Tigers on an $8.5MM deal in 2023. After pitching a career-high 153 innings in 2023 and making his first All-Star team, it seems Lorenzen is prioritizing a multi-year pact so as to avoid yet another swift return to the market. That’s only natural, but at this stage of the winter, it’s far from a lock that one will present itself.

[Related: Let’s find a home for Michael Lorenzen]

Lorenzen started 25 games and made four relief appearances last season. He carried a 4.03 ERA through 87 innings into the All-Star break and was named the Tigers’ lone All-Star representative. His second half began with an otherworldly hot streak, and Lorenzen was flipped from Detroit to Philadelphia along the way, scarcely missing a beat early in his Phillies stint following the trade.

From July 6 through Aug. 9, Lorenzen piled up 40 2/3 innings with a 1.11 ERA and strong 31-to-12 K/BB ratio. He capped off his stellar run with an eight-inning, two-run gem against the Marlins and a 124-pitch no-hitter against the Nationals in his first start at Philadelphia’s Citizens Bank Park. That dropped his season-long ERA to a tidy 3.23, and while Lorenzen’s pedestrian 19.4% strikeout rate and tiny .244 average on balls in play didn’t fully support the extent of his success, he still looked well on his way to a possible multi-year deal in free agency.

His season took a sharp downturn from there. Perhaps wearing down as he pushed into uncharted territory in terms of workload, Lorenzen was rocked for 27 runs over his next 26 1/3 innings. The Phillies moved him to the bullpen in September, and although he finished with a handful of scoreless relief outings, Lorenzen’s 4.18 ERA was a far sight higher than it was at peak levels. His 17.8% strikeout rate was well shy of the league average, while his 7.5% walk rate and 41% grounder rate were closer to par among starters. But Lorenzen’s lack of whiffs, solid-but-not-elite command and susceptibility to home runs caused fielding-independent metrics to cast a far more bearish outlook on his season overall (4.46 FIP, 4.87 SIERA).

Lorenzen and his camp could perhaps make the claim to teams that he wore down or that his late-season struggles were fluky in nature, but teams could surely make similar claims that his torrid run from mid-July to mid-August doesn’t accurately represent his ability either. A two-year deal with a modest bump in AAV has always seemed plausible, though. MLBTR predicted a two-year, $22MM deal back in November. Just last offseason, we saw Ross Stripling ($25MM), Sean Manaea ($25MM), Drew Smyly ($19MM) and Jordan Lyles ($17MM) all sign two-year guarantees at or north of Lorenzen’s 2023 salary level — the first three with opt-outs included.

It’s plenty understandable if Lorenzen entered free agency thinking such a deal generally represented a floor of sorts for him. Perhaps early in the offseason, such offers would’ve been more attainable. Now, it’s increasingly difficult to convince teams to dole out guaranteed money on multi-year deals, particularly for starting pitchers who might not be able to fully build up in the remaining three and a half weeks of camp.

One thing that could yet help Lorenzen find a deal to his liking is the mounting slate of pitching injuries around the league as camps progress. The Red Sox may have lost their marquee offseason pickup, Lucas Giolito, for the season already. Giants fifth starter Tristan Beck won’t throw for eight weeks, and one of their top depth options is dealing with an elbow sprain. The Cardinals and Astros will begin the season with their would-be Opening Day starters on the injured list. The Blue Jays and Marlins are both dealing with possible injuries to notable starters.

Any one of those issues could cause the market for Lorenzen to pick up steam, but the longer he waits to sign, the more likely it is that he’ll need some minor league starts to ramp up before joining a big league rotation. We’re not necessarily to that point on the schedule just yet, but it’s getting close.