KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Michael Lorenzen and the Kansas City Royals agreed to a $7 million, one-year contract that includes a mutual option for 2026, a person familiar with the deal told The Associated Press on Monday.
The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because the deal was pending a successful physical. Lorenzen would earn a $5.5 million salary this year, and the price of the 2026 option is $12 million, with a $1.5 million buyout.
The 33-year-old Lorenzen was acquired by Kansas City in a trade with Texas just before the deadline last July and became a dependable part of the pitching staff down the stretch. The right-hander appeared in seven games with six starts and went 2-0 with a 1.57 ERA to help the Royals clinch a wild card, then tossed 2 1/3 innings over two appearances in the playoffs.
Lorenzen took the loss in Game 1 of the AL Division Series against the New York Yankees, giving up Alex Verdugo's go-ahead single in the seventh inning of a 6-5 defeat. The Royals went on to lose the series to New York in four games.
Lorenzen spent his first seven seasons in Cincinnati, then spent a year with the Angels, before splitting the 2023 season between the Tigers and Phillies, getting selected to his only All-Star Game. He has a career record of 47-44 with a 3.99 ERA and 15 saves in 368 games, including 93 starts.
The top of the Royals' starting rotation appears to be set with Michael Wacha returning on a three-year, $51 million contract to join Seth Lugo and Cole Ragans, both of whom made the All-Star Game for Kansas City last season.
The Royals hope Kyle Wright can return to the form he displayed in Atlanta after spending last season rehabbing from shoulder surgery. Kris Bubic and Alec Marsh are among those who will compete with Lorenzen for one of the remaining starting spots.
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FILE - Kansas City Royals starting pitcher Michael Lorenzen (24) in action during a baseball game against the Washington Nationals, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Nick Wass, File)
President-elect Donald Trump said Tuesday that he would move to try to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” a name he said has a “beautiful ring to it.”
It's his latest suggestion to redraw the map of the Western Hemisphere. Trump has repeatedly referred to Canada as the “51st State,” demanded that Denmark consider ceding Greenland, and called for Panama to return the Panama Canal.
Here's a look at his comment and what goes into a name.
Since his first run for the White House in 2016, Trump has repeatedly clashed with Mexico over a number of issues, including border security and the imposition of tariffs on imported goods. He vowed then to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and make Mexico pay for it. The U.S. ultimately constructed or refurbished about 450 miles of wall during his first term.
The Gulf of Mexico is often referred to as the United States' “Third Coast” due to its coastline across five southeastern states. Mexicans use a Spanish version of the same name for the gulf: “El Golfo de México.”
Americans and Mexicans diverge on what to call another key body of water, the river that forms the border between Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. Americans call it the Rio Grande; Mexicans call it the Rio Bravo.
Maybe, but it's not a unilateral decision, and other countries don't have to go along.
The International Hydrographic Organization — of which both the United States and Mexico are members — works to ensure all the world’s seas, oceans and navigable waters are surveyed and charted uniformly, and also names some of them. There are instances where countries refer to the same body of water or landmark by different names in their own documentation.
It can be easier when a landmark or body of water is within a country's boundaries. In 2015, then-President Barack Obama approved an order from the Department of Interior to rename Mount McKinley — the highest peak in North America — to Denali, a move that Trump has also said he wants to reverse.
Just after Trump's comments on Tuesday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said during an interview with podcaster Benny Johnson that she would direct her staff to draft legislation to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico, a move she said would take care of funding for new maps and administrative policy materials throughout the federal government.
The body of water has been depicted with that name for more than four centuries, an original determination believed to have been taken from a Native American city of “Mexico.”
Yes. In 2012, a member of the Mississippi Legislature proposed a bill to rename portions of the gulf that touch that state's beaches “Gulf of America,” a move the bill author later referred to as a “joke.” That bill, which was referred to a committee, did not pass.
Two years earlier, comedian Stephen Colbert had joked on his show that, following the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it should be renamed “Gulf of America” because, "We broke it, we bought it.”
There's a long-running dispute over the name of the Sea of Japan among Japan, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, with South Korea arguing that the current name wasn't commonly used until Korea was under Japanese rule. At an International Hydrographic Organization meeting in 2020, member states agreed on a plan to replace names with numerical identifiers and develop a new digital standard for modern geographic information systems.
The Persian Gulf has been widely known by that name since the 16th century, although usage of “Gulf” and “Arabian Gulf” is dominant in many countries in the Middle East. The government of Iran threatened to sue Google in 2012 over the company's decision not to label the body of water at all on its maps.
There have been other conversations about bodies of water, including from Trump’s 2016 opponent. According to materials revealed by WikiLeaks in a hack of her campaign chairman’s personal account, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2013 told an audience that, by China’s logic that it claimed nearly the entirety of the South China Sea, then the U.S. after World War II could have labeled the Pacific Ocean the “American Sea.”
Kinnard reported from Chapin, South Carolina, and can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.
President-elect Donald Trump walks from the podium after a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
