Royals’ Michael Lorenzen had the best catch you’ll see by a pitcher this season
Thanks to Statcast, nearly everything a baseball player does on the field is measured these days.
Rarely, however, is “sprint speed” or “distance needed” applied to a defensive play by a pitcher. But they were used Thursday during the Royals’ 6-4 win over the Rangers at Kauffman Stadium.
The Rangers had two runners on with one out in the third inning when Texas’ Ezequiel Duran popped up a pitch on the foul side of the third-base line.
Royals third baseman Maikel Garcia battled the sun, which was a problem for both teams Wednesday, and that’s when Lorenzen took matters into his own hands.
Lorenzen sprinted after the ball and grabbed it before running into the railing along the Rangers dugout. Lorenzen reached a top speed of 23.6 feet per second and covered 92 feet to get to this ball.
In my humble opinion, you will not see a better catch by a Royals pitcher this season. It might be the best by any MLB pitcher this season.
Garcia told me after the game he wasn’t going to catch the ball, so Lorenzen made the right call by taking charge.
“I couldn’t tell if Mikey had seen it. It didn’t seem like he was tracking it well,” Lorenzen said. “So I know the sun obviously was out. There were some overcast early on, but there wasn’t any clouds in the sky at that point in time.
“And so as I’m running over, I’m kind of checking him out, seeing if he’s seeing it. And I just couldn’t tell. I felt like he couldn’t see it. So I just kept going for it, and then gave him one last look at the end there, when we both kind of got close to see if he was there, and I could tell, I don’t think he sees it. So I went for it.”
Lorenzen was checked out by a Royals trainer after the catch, but he wasn’t injured. He took advantage of the break because he was in danger of a pitch-clock violation.
This story was originally published August 21, 2025 at 5:29 PM.
