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The Philadelphia Phillies acquired Michael Lorenzen on the buying and selling deadline in hopes of bolstering their beginning rotation as they made a playoff push.
In simply his second begin with the staff, he greater than delivered, tossing a no-hitter in a 7-0 win over the Washington Nationals on Wednesday evening in Philadelphia.
Lorenzen’s outing was the fourth no-hitter of the season and got here simply eight days after the earlier one, during which Framber Valdez of the Houston Astros allowed just one baserunner and confronted the minimal variety of hitters towards the Cleveland Guardians.
Lorenzen had a extra treacherous path to historical past. He entered the ninth inning with 111 pitches, already a season excessive, and had already walked 4 batters.
He accomplished the no-hitter by getting Nationals first baseman Dominic Smith to fly out to middle fielder Johan Rojas. Lorenzen ended up with 124 pitches, passing the Los Angeles Angels right-hander Griffin Canning for probably the most thrown by any pitcher in a recreation this season.
Starters lately usually throw round 100 pitches per recreation, and worries about overtaxing pitchers with excessive pitch counts have led to some managers pulling the plug on no-hit bids. Final season, for instance, Dodgers Supervisor Dave Roberts eliminated the star left-hander Clayton Kershaw from a chilly April recreation in Minnesota after seven good innings, regardless that he had thrown solely 80 pitches.
However with the Phillies main by seven runs towards the Nationals, the last-place staff within the Nationwide League East, Supervisor Rob Thomson might afford to go away Lorenzen within the recreation to complete the 14th no-hitter in franchise historical past.
After the sport, Thomson instructed reporters that Smith might have been Lorenzen’s final batter whatever the end result.
“I could have needed to put on a bulletproof vest,” Thomson mentioned of the potential penalties he would have confronted if he had taken out Lorenzen.
Lorenzen’s teammates mobbed him after the ultimate out and his mom and different relations celebrated within the stands. In a postgame tv interview, he grew to become choked up when requested how his father, who died in 2016, would have reacted.
“He’d simply be saying, ‘Atta boy. Strategy to end it,’” he mentioned.
Lorenzen, a right-hander, joined Philadelphia earlier this month by a commerce from Detroit, the place he had been in his first season there. He was the Tigers’ requisite consultant finally month’s All-Star Recreation in Seattle, the place he pitched two-thirds of an inning in reduction in his first profession All-Star look.
He joined a Philadelphia staff that had began slowly this season after making the 2022 World Sequence. The slugging first baseman Rhys Hoskins tore a knee ligament in spring coaching, and the star outfielder Bryce Harper didn’t make his season debut till Could after recovering from Tommy John surgical procedure.
The Phillies entered July with a successful document however in third place within the N.L. East. They’ve since climbed to second to achieve one of many league’s wild-card positions.
In selecting to commerce for Lorenzen, Philadelphia added to a energy. Its pitching employees ranks within the high 5 within the N.L. in opponents’ common, walks and hits per innings pitched and E.R.A. regardless of taking part in its house video games on the typically hitter pleasant Residents Financial institution Park and the staff having a league-average protection.
Lorenzen made his main league debut with Cincinnati in 2015, beginning 21 video games earlier than changing into a full-time reliever over the following six seasons with the membership. An outfielder in school at Cal State, Fullerton, Lorenzen even sometimes pinch hit and performed the outfield with Cincinnati. He has a profession .233 common with seven house runs and made six begins in middle discipline in 2019.
His moonlighting as an outfielder pale in 2020 and 2021, with the introduction of the designated hitter within the N.L. and Lorenzen injured for parts of 2021. In search of to be a full-time starter, he joined the Angels in 2022 and left two-way exploits to another person (Shohei Ohtani). On Wednesday, at the least, it appeared like an amazing alternative.
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