The thing that drives this Royals pitcher crazy is also critical to his success
To be sure, Royals pitcher Michael Lorenzen’s first decade in the major leagues was embellished with highlights that most people could only dream of or envy.
Before he helped Kansas City to the 2024 postseason with a 1.57 ERA in six starts and a relief appearance after arriving from Texas at midseason, those indelible moments included one of the most moving scenes you can imagine.
In 2016, he hit his first career home run upon returning from the bereavement list following the death of his father, Clif — a man he’d learned to forgive for revealing reasons we’ll come back to.
Good luck not misting up if you watch the replay and the celebration even without knowing the full back story.
“I don’t think I’ll ever feel that way again,” he told reporters in Cincinnati that night.
Still with the Reds in 2019, Lorenzen became just the second player in MLB history to earn a win as a pitcher, hit a home run and play in the field (apart from the mound) in the same game. The other? One George Herman “Babe” Ruth in 1921.
And less than two years ago, he pitched a no-hitter in his home debut with the Phillies.
But as Lorenzen prepares for his scheduled 2025 debut for the Royals on Tuesday in Milwaukee, none of that stuff looms as laurels upon which he might rest.
Instead, they’re enduring symbols of how the pursuit of the best of himself is never done — a mindset entwined with the Christian faith that lifted him from the distress and chaos of his early childhood and rerouted his own treacherous trajectory.
“I’m always trying to maximize the gift that God’s given me,” he said in an interview with The Star in front of his locker at the Royals’ spring training complex in Surprise, Arizona. “And then when I feel like I’m not, it just drives me crazy. It keeps me up at night.”
Then again, it keeps him going, too.
Trouble is ...
“I feel motivated every day, and then I leave upset (at falling short of perfection),” he said with a smile. “And then I wake up the next morning, and I show up motivated.
“And then I leave upset again.”
Even through what might be considered the parable of the pinnacle of the no-hitter.
You’ve never arrived, it turns out.
“I was OK with myself until (nine) days later, when I made that next start,” he said. “And then I just imploded the rest of the season.”
Through his next five starts, in fact, Lorenzen gave up 37 hits and 23 earned runs in 26 innings and was shuffled to the bullpen.
“It was like night and day,” he said.
Much like his life before and after a momentous event when he was 16 years old, at what he recalled as the Newport Beach Pier near where he grew up in California.
‘Not-so-good stuff’
Until then, he said …
“I was definitely on a path of going into some not-so-good stuff …” he said. “I’m pretty sure it would have led into a lot more, especially as I moved up the ladder (in baseball) and things became more available to me.”
He added, “I was exposed to a lot.”
Starting with an entirely “dysfunctional” home life, he said, echoing what he described at length in his 2016 testimony on the Renewed Strength Fitness channel on YouTube.
His alcoholic parents fought so much and so hard, he said back then, that “cops would come to my house almost every weekend.”
His three older brothers drank and fought and otherwise routinely were in turmoil and trouble.
And after his father left them to avoid arrest on grand theft and forgery charges, his brothers were out of the house and his mother, Cheryl, was working to make ends meet, Lorenzen was left unsupervised so often he could “literally do whatever I want.”
So he turned to pot and alcohol almost daily by eighth grade. And while he was doing fine in school, it wasn’t because he was a good student.
It was because he was smart enough to know how to fake his way. And when he couldn’t, he cheated or counted on getting away with things because he was good enough at baseball to have hopes of being drafted — like his brother Jonathan had been by the Dodgers in the 14th round of the 2000 MLB Draft.
Although Lorenzen had a certain sense of belief in God, particularly after having seen the 2004 movie “The Passion of the Christ,” that was more of a passive notion than any sort of guiding light or code.
Then came that night on the pier.
The moment that changed everything
It was after a high school homecoming dance, and Lorenzen remembers having just come off a party bus with friends and being high when a man asked to talk to them about God.
The group stopped, but it was mostly to mock and laugh at the man.
But Lorenzen didn’t succumb to that peer pressure on the pier.
Instead, he remembers feeling compelled to listen and struck by the message that it wasn’t enough just to believe.
What rang clear to him was the need to live for and serve God — a launch point that promptly sent him in a new direction.
Only a day or two later, he recalled, he went to a youth church event he was led to by his second-oldest brother, Matthew — who by then had found his own way and emerged as a father figure.
“For the first time, I just felt like I’m kind of understanding what this pastor is talking about up there,” he said. “I’m understanding what the spirit is saying. It’s just hitting me.”
Whether or not he would have been a pro baseball player without that can’t be known.
Lorenzen knows there are plenty of people of faith who don’t make it, and plenty with entirely different belief systems and religious differences who do.
But Lorenzen, who played collegiately at California State-Fullerton and was drafted 38th overall in 2013, knows this much:
“My motivation for why I’m in the major leagues is different (than it would have been without his faith),” he said. “My motivations would have been for what comes along with being a major league baseball player, what comes along with getting a paycheck from a major league organization at 18 years old — and what that does to my mind and my ego and the future of who I decide to marry, the future of how I decide to raise my kids, and, all that stuff.”
In the big leagues or not, he added, “it would have been dysfunction either way.”
‘It’s not perfect’
Instead, Lorenzen sure seems about as functional as anyone could be.
For one thing, he’s as approachable, expansive and thoughtful as anyone in the Royals’ clubhouse.
Whether with reporters or, say, pitching coach Brian Sweeney, who admires Lorenzen’s zeal to get better even at age 33.
“Just have a conversation with him about pitching, and you build a campfire,” Sweeney said, smiling. “because you’ll be there for a while, right?”
He’s been married for seven years to a woman of similar faith, Cassi, and they have a young daughter.
And he and his mother and other brothers all have connected through the religion that also enabled him to reconcile with his father before he died.
“If I’m going to ask God for forgiveness, I’m going to need to give forgiveness,” he said. “Because I’ve done much worse to God than anyone has done to me.”
When he entered the game that night in Cincinnati after his father’s death, Lorenzen had changed his entrance song to “Who Are You” by The Who.
It was a statement to honor his dad, whom Lorenzen called a “big hippie” and who loved that band.
But it also was a parallel statement made by a man who knows exactly who he is.
Even if that also means always feeling like he’s a work in progress.
“Just like in baseball, it’s not perfect,” he said. “But (that’s fine) as long as you’re trying to get better each and every day.”