{"id":393507,"date":"2025-11-21T01:20:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T01:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/393507\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T01:20:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T01:20:11","slug":"royals-finalizing-contract-with-alex-lange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/393507\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals Finalizing Contract With Alex Lange"},"content":{"rendered":"

Free agent reliever\u00a0Alex Lange<\/a><\/strong> is finalizing a one-year contract with the Royals, reports Anne Rogers of MLB.com<\/a>. The righty had been released by the Tigers on Tuesday. The Royals have an opening on the 40-man roster.<\/p>\n

The 30-year-old Lange is a former first-round pick who spent a few seasons as one of Detroit\u2019s top relievers. He worked as A.J. Hinch\u2019s closer for a good chunk of the 2023 season, going 26-32 in save chances. Lange turned in a 3.68 earned run average while striking out 27.4% of opposing hitters across 66 innings that year. He got grounders on half the batted balls he allowed while missing bats on a huge 15.5% of his offerings. Lange was prone to bouts of wildness but his stuff played.<\/p>\n

Lange\u2019s strikeout rate plummeted early in the 2024 season. Detroit demoted him to Triple-A by the end of May. Lange seemed like he was bouncing back against minor league competition until he suffered a significant lat injury. That required surgery which not only ended his \u201924 campaign but shelved him until August this year. Lange was essentially a non-factor for two straight years. He only pitched one time at the big league level this past season, working around two hits and a walk to complete a scoreless inning.<\/p>\n

The encouraging sign is that Lange\u2019s stuff didn\u2019t appear diminished. He averaged 96.2 MPH on his sinker and 88.4 MPH on his knuckle-curve in that lone big league appearance. Both velocities were marginally up from where he\u2019d sat two years ago. Lange punched out nearly 30% of Triple-A opponents while turning in a 4.63 ERA across 24 appearances. He also walked 14.3% of batters faced, but that\u2019s par for the course for a pitcher who has always had well below-average control.<\/p>\n

It\u2019ll surely be a cheap one-year flier on a pitcher with plus stuff and some high-leverage experience. Lange has a minor league option remaining, so the Royals can keep him in Triple-A Omaha next season without exposing him to waivers. He has between three and four years of service, meaning K.C. could control him for three seasons. Lange will need a healthy season to convince the Royals to tender him contracts that\u2019d make the extra control years meaningful, but there\u2019s a bit of long-term upside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Free agent reliever\u00a0Alex Lange is finalizing a one-year contract with the Royals, reports Anne Rogers of MLB.com. The…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":393508,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[91731,1266,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-393507","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-alex-lange","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115585064916054139","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}