Tigers held scoreless by old friend Lorenzen

DETROIT -- Scott Harris arrived as Detroit’s president of baseball operations two years ago with a goal of making the Tigers a team where pitchers go to improve their craft and their career. Michael Lorenzen was one of the first players to do it, becoming an All-Star in his only season in Detroit before being traded to Philadelphia for infield prospect Hao-Yu Lee and then throwing a no-hitter in his second start for the Phillies.

“I love Detroit. I love the city, loved living in Birmingham,” Lorenzen said. “Everything about Detroit I really enjoyed. The guys over there are great.”

“His openness to tweak a few things here and there was a good sign we were on the right track,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said before Monday’s series opener against Texas.

Maybe they were too good at it. Or, given Detroit’s offensive struggles for much of this season, maybe it was more of the same.

Hinch couldn’t help but note the irony of Lorenzen, who signed a one-year deal with the Rangers just a few weeks ago, making his first start for the defending World Series champions at what was his home park a year ago and facing a lineup with several familiar ex-teammates.

The 1-0 loss that followed was a lot of what made Lorenzen effective while he was here, as well as for a stretch in Philly.

When Lorenzen no-hit the Nationals last August, he gave up almost as many walks (four) as strikeouts (five). When he blanked the Mariners a few weeks before that as part of a 22-inning scoreless streak in his final weeks as a Tiger, he walked five batters in 6 2/3 innings. On Monday, he walked five batters in as many innings, including four in a 10-batter stretch. He survived by erasing three of those walks with double plays.

“We had a rough game today,” Mark Canha said. “We just didn’t get the hit when we needed to.”

Thus the Tigers -- who suffered three 1-0 losses last year, including one with Lorenzen on the mound last June against Kansas City -- suffered their first such defeat this season. Detroit has scored in one of its last 24 innings, Sunday’s four-run eighth inning to beat the Twins.

“We had better at-bats, which is hard to say with being shut out,” Hinch said. “But I do think we had better at-bats, gave ourselves better chances. But the three double plays, we just didn’t get the big hits.”

The same team that struck out 42 times in a three-game stretch against the Twins before Sunday, swung and missed just seven times over Lorenzen’s 79 pitches Monday night. They took 17 pitches for called strikes, including a changeup to Colt Keith to strand Spencer Torkelson on third base in the fourth inning.

More importantly, they couldn’t do enough with the hittable pitches they had -- some due to swings, some due to fortune. Detroit put just three balls in play with exit velocities over 100 miles per hour, all off Lorenzen. The hardest-hit ball the Tigers, or any hitter, had all day came off Matt Vierling’s bat at 107.9 mph, right after back-to-back walks leading off the fourth. The hard-hit ball went right to Rangers shortstop Josh Smith.

“He gets a center-cut fastball with a little bit of movement in,” Hinch said, “and if he gets the ball in the air and drops it in the gap it’s a great result, because he hunted the pitch. He hits the ball on the ground and it’s a double play.”

The other two double plays came from Canha, historically a tougher player to double up due to his propensity to avoid ground balls with runners on base. He hit a third-inning sinker in the zone back up the middle, nabbed on a diving stop by Smith, and an elevated slider in the fifth.

The Tigers are nowhere near the league leaders in double plays or ground outs to air outs. But it bit them on Monday against an old friend.

“I don’t think it was a pitch selection issue. It wasn’t like we swung at bad pitches,” Canha said. “We just didn’t hit the ball in the air. That’s the name of the game these days. It’s early in the season and I have full confidence that the next time that situation comes up, I’m going to hit the ball in the air. And I’m going to devote the next week to figuring out how to do that better.”