HOUSTON — In an empty stadium.
In front of no fans.
Facing his teammates.
Michael Lorenzen took an important step towards joining the Detroit Tigers starting rotation.
Lorenzen, who is recovering from a groin injury, threw three innings of a simulated game against three of his teammates on Monday afternoon at Minute Maid Park.
“He was pain-free,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “He threw the ball very well. He had no adrenaline whatsoever on a live BP (batting practice) day. With no one in the stands, he still had pretty decent stuff. So he faced three hitters. I think he threw 45 pitches and came out of it with no issues. If that continues, then we’d like to put him on a rehab assignment.”
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Barring any setbacks, that could come on Saturday.
“I feel great,” Lorenzen said. “The shapes were good on all my pitches. It’s really just building up the workload of pitches and innings again.”
Lorenzen cracked Ryan Kreidler’s bat on a slider.
“He’s working on a slider and he just looked good,” Kreidler said. “He looked like himself. The velo was there, the stuff is there, I’m excited for him.”
Lorenzen signed a one-year, $8.5 million contract in the offseason, and he is expected to hold a spot in the starting rotation.
He started three games in spring training, posting a 4.91 ERA with four walks and nine strikeouts in 7 1/3 innings. He began his big-league career as a starter in 2015, pitched out of the bullpen from 2016-21 and returned to being a starter in 2022 with the Los Angeles Angels, with a 4.24 ERA in 97 2/3 innings over 18 starts.
Lorenzen was placed on the 15-day injured list, retroactive to March 27.
When could he return? Hinch wouldn’t even guess.
“I would hope it would be shorter rather than longer,” Hinch said. “But similar to last year, I’m done predicting what that could look like.”
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Maton vs. Maton?
In this series against Houston, could we see Nick Maton vs. Phil Maton, Part II?
Nick Maton was penciled into the leadoff spot for the Tigers on Monday.
And older brother Phil is a reliever for the Astros.
So, could they face each other?
“If it happens, it happens -— great,” Nick Maton said Monday. “It’s already happened, so I really don’t need it to happen again. But if it does, it does.”
They faced each other in the final regular season game of 2022, when Nick was playing for the Phillies.
“Once people started realizing what was happening, it was loud man,” Nick Maton said. “It was crazy. Both dugouts were going nuts. It was really cool. Their whole team was barking at me.”
Nick singled off his brother in the eighth inning.
But it wasn’t even brought up at Christmas.
“We kind of don’t really talk about it that much,” Nick said. “He won in the end. He won himself a ring.”
Phil’s Astros went on to win the World Series over Nick’s Phillies, with Phil pitching in five of the six games. Nick appeared in just one Series game, lining out to end the seventh inning of Game 2 against reliever Rafael Montero.
Phil last pitched Friday against the Chicago White Sox, throwing one inning.
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Homecoming for Hinch
When Hinch returns to Minute Maid Park, even in the visiting dugout, it’s always big news in Houston. The Tigers skipper led the Astros for five seasons, including a World Series title in 2017 and four playoff appearances. But he was suspended by MLB, then fired by the Astros before the 2020 season for not doing more to halt the franchise’s trash-can-banging cheating system during the 2017 season.
He still lives during the offseason in The Woodlands, Texas, a suburb of Houston; in his third return to the city with the Tigers, he drew a large crowd of media members on Monday.
He said that he stays in touch with several members of the Astros.
“Relationships matter,” Hinch said. “In this game and in this role, those relationships will last forever. There’s a lot of players over there that I didn’t manage, but the ones that I did, I maintain contact with and root for them for every game that we don’t play against them.”
Contact Jeff Seidel at jseidel@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @seideljeff.
To read Seidel’s recent columns, go to freep.com/sports/jeff-seidel.