Rangers Trade Michael Lorenzen To Royals

The Rangers announced Monday morning that they’ve traded right-hander Michael Lorenzen to the Royals in exchange for minor league lefty Walter Pennington. Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported shortly before the announcement that Kansas City had been showing interest in Lorenzen. Pennington is on the 40-man roster, so no corresponding moves were necessary.

A trade of Lorenzen isn’t a signal that the third-place Rangers are punting on their season. There’s been plenty of talk over the past couple weeks that with Max Scherzer, Dane Dunning, Tyler Mahle and eventually Jacob deGrom all getting healthy, Texas could move an arm from its current rotation. Lorenzen, playing on an affordable one-year contract and slated to become a free agent at season’s end, has stood as the most obvious of the bunch to change hands. With Lorenzen headed to Kansas City, the Rangers’ rotation will include Scherzer, Nathan Eovaldi, Jon Gray, Andrew Heaney and perhaps Dunning — although Mahle is on the cusp of wrapping up a minor league rehab assignment and could take that fifth spot.

Lorenzen, 32, has pitched 101 2/3 innings with the Rangers and turned in a very solid 3.81 earned run average, although the rest of his numbers aren’t as encouraging. Lorenzen’s 17.9% strikeout rate is well below the 22.3% league average, while his 11.5% walk rate is considerably higher than the 8.2% league average. He’s kept the ball on the ground at a nice 42.3% clip, but Lorenzen has also benefited from a .243 average on balls in play and 80.7% strand rate that are both considerably better than his career marks of .279 and 74.2%. Some regression on one or both is likely.

Even with some regression, however, Lorenzen is a solid enough back-end starter. This year’s numbers are a decent approximation of who he’s been since reaching free agency three years ago and pursuing a career as a starting pitcher after previously spending five seasons in the Reds’ bullpen. Lorenzen posted a 4.20 ERA, 18.9% strikeout rate and 8.8% walk rate in 250 2/3 innings between the Angels, Tigers and Phillies over the 2022-23 seasons. Add in this year’s work and he’s at a 4.09 ERA with strikeout and walk rates that are worse-than-average but not egregiously so.

That’s a good indication of what to expect moving forward for the Royals, and Lorenzen has shown some flashes of higher output at times. His first two starts following a trade to the Phillies last summer will always be memorable for Phils fans; he tossed eight innings of two-run ball in his team debut and followed it up with a no-hitter against the Nationals his next time out, in his home debut at Citizens Bank Park. However, Lorenzen faded down the stretch, as he was pushing to a career-high innings workload (and also tossed a career-high 124 pitches in that no-hitter). The Phils moved him to the bullpen late in the season.

Kansas City’s rotation is generally full, with Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo, Brady Singer, Michael Wacha and Alec Marsh representing a sound one through five. Marsh has been hit hard after a solid start to the season, however, yielding a 6.37 ERA over his past 10 starts. He’s had a few solid outings mixed in throughout that stretch, but since May 27 he’s given up at least three runs in eight of his 10 starts (and at least four in six of them).

Lorenzen could step into that rotation spot, perhaps pushing Marsh to the bullpen or even to Triple-A Omaha. Lorenzen has already pitched enough innings to boost his $4.5MM base salary to $5.5MM, and he’d earn bonuses of $300K, $350K, $400K and $450K for reaching 120, 140, 160 and 180 innings, respectively. The Royals could technically use Lorenzen in the bullpen — they just saw both John Schreiber and Hunter Harvey exit their most recent game due to injury — but that’d be somewhat of a surprising usage given that they traded a big league-ready reliever who’s in the midst of a terrific Triple-A season in order to acquire Lorenzen.

Pennington, 26, will join the Rangers and give them an immediate option out of the ’pen. The Rangers haven’t been able to find a consistently effective lefty relief option this season, but Pennington could fit that bill. Undrafted in the shortened 2020 draft, the 6’2″, 205-pound southpaw signed out of the Colorado School of Mines — and earlier this season became just the second player from that school to ever reach the majors (and the first since Roy Hartzell back in 1906).

The Royals called Pennington up for a brief debut, but he threw just two-thirds of an inning before being sent back down to Omaha. He’s been lights-out with the Storm Chasers this season, pitching to a pristine 2.26 ERA with a 32.9% strikeout rate, an 8.3% walk rate and a 52.6% ground-ball rate in 59 2/3 frames. Pennington sits 92-93 mph with a sinker, 89-90 mph with his cutter and 83-85 mph with a slider, rounding out a trio of primary offerings. More than half of his pitches this year have been sliders, and he’s held both lefties and righties in check along the way, yielding near-identical batting lines of .198/.250/.286 (to righties) and .156/.262/.278 (to lefties).

Pennington is in the first of three minor league option years. He can’t reach a full year of big league service in 2024, meaning the Rangers will control him through the 2030 season at the very least (although future optional assignments could push that free agent trajectory back even further). He makes for a potential long-term option in the Texas bullpen — a nice pull for a rental starter whose spot in the rotation was in jeopardy given the sheer volume of veteran arms the Rangers have coming back from injury.