Cleveland — Tigers right-hander Michael Lorenzen wanted his changeup back.
With the Reds in 2019, he limited hitters to a .108 batting average and got a 44.7% whiff rate with that pitch. Same thing in 2020, 44.6% whiff rate. It was pretty good last season, too, holding hitters to a .154 average with a 38% whiff rate.
But it hadn’t been the same this season. So he went to work.
“I went back and looked at every single changeup I threw in 2019 and 2020 (361 of them), my best years with it,” Lorenzen said. “I watched every single one of them and I looked at the movement profile on them.”
What he found was back then he was staying behind the pitch more. In recent years, in trying to chase certain metrics, he began pronating his wrist more and more (like a right-hander would who was throwing a screwball) and he ultimately lost the feel for it.
“Yeah, I wasn’t doing that before,” he said. “I was staying behind the baseball. The guys here (pitching coaches) were like, ‘It’s the sell. It looks like you’re throwing it as hard as your fastball.’ The hitter doesn’t pick up the spin.
“I realized it’s not the movement that matters, it’s the sell of it to the hitter.”
He made the change on Monday, the day before his start.
“It’s been great because since simplifying my mix, I haven’t been focusing on my curveball and cutter and I could spend more time on my changeup trying to hone that in,” he said. “Which I did literally the day before my start. And I threw 85% strikes.
“I’ve been looking for that for a really long time. And the movement on it was better, too. Less ride and more fade.”
Lorenzen threw 25 changeups against the Guardians Tuesday night. Seven of them were put in play with a soft average exit velocity of 85 mph. He got seven misses on 20 swings and it helped set up his other pitches, particularly his slider and four-seam, off which he got 10 whiffs and 13 called strikes.
“The changeup is my pitch,” he said. “I played with Luis Castillo for a long time (he has an elite changeup) and he went for a small stretch where he didn’t have his changeup. It changed everything for him. The changeup is my pitch. I can rely on it heavily and when I don’t have it, it can really be a battle.”
chris.mccosky@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @cmccosky