Detroit Tigers reliever Alex Lange suffers upper-body injury with Triple-A Toledo
HOUSTON — Detroit Tigers right-handed reliever Alex Lange, who has been pitching in the minor leagues since getting optioned May 23 to Triple-A Toledo, signaled to the trainers in the dugout immediately after throwing a curveball for a swinging strikeout in Friday's game.
He suffered an upper-body injury.
"Obviously, it didn't look great," Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said.
ON MAY 23: Tigers option reliever Alex Lange to Triple-A Toledo to work on throwing strikes
Lange — who grabbed in the area of his latissimus dorsi muscle after his final pitch — received further tests Saturday, including an MRI exam, but the Tigers won't release an official diagnosis until evaluating the results of those tests.
But the 28-year-old appears to have suffered a severe injury.
"I feel for him," Hinch said. "He's down there working hard and trying to recapture his breaking ball and get in the strike zone more, and he was starting to do that. Anytime when you see a player motion out to the trainer, he looked like was very uncomfortable."
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The Tigers optioned Lange to Triple-A Toledo on May 23 for two reasons: to throw more pitches inside the strike zone and to fix his curveball. He is working hard, but he hasn't accomplished either of those things within the past three weeks.
His curveball lacks downward movement, averaging minus-0.1 inches of induced vertical break in MLB and plus-1.7 inches of IVB at the Triple-A level.
Right now, Lange's curveball profiles like a lazy slider.
His curveball used to have more downward movement, at minus-7.4 inches of IVB in 2021, but the negative downward movement has disappeared in each of his four MLB seasons, all the way to the point of being nonexistent in 2024.
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As for throwing strikes, Lange threw 42.2% of his pitches inside the strike zone in MLB before the Tigers demoted him. He has a 39.7% in-zone rate since joining the Mud Hens.
With the Tigers, Lange posted a 4.34 ERA with 17 walks and 21 strikeouts across 18⅔ innings in 21 relief appearances. With the Mud Hens, he has a 3.12 ERA with one walk and 12 strikeouts across 8⅔ innings in nine relief appearances.
Lange had 26 saves for the Tigers last season.
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Tigers' Alex Lange suffers injury pitching in Triple-A
