A newly reassigned Major League Baseball player is thanking God for his success on the field after becoming the first pitcher to throw a no-hitter for his team in almost 10 years. Michael Lorenzen, who plays for the Philadelphia Phillies, pitched a no-hitter as his team played the Washington Nationals in a home game.
A no-hitter is a game where one team doesn’t get any hits because all the balls the pitcher throws result in walks, outs, or errors. Immediately after the game, Lorenzen credited his Christian faith for his strong performance in remarks to NBC Sports Philadelphia. He said, “I just had God’s grace today, and I definitely got to thank God for today. I got to give Him all the glory just to be able to keep me calm and trusting in Him. Whatever happened, I was just going to trust in Him, and that’s kind of what I’ve been doing all season in trying to just lean on Him.”
Lorenzen brought up his faith again in a subsequent interview. In addition to repeatedly declaring “God is good,” he insisted that “the only thing I can do is just step back and thank God for everything, literally everything that He’s done for me.” Lorenzen’s no-hitter comes only a week after the Phillies announced they added him to their active roster.
The team acquired him from the Detroit Tigers. In addition to a brief time with the Tigers, Lorenzen’s previous MLB experience includes pitching for the Cincinnati Reds from 2015 to 2021 and the Los Angeles Angels in 2022. Lorenzen’s faith also looms large on his social media pages. His Instagram bio describes him as “unashamed of the Gospel of Christ.” The biography on Lorenzen’s Twitter account, which has not been updated since January, identifies him as a “Servant” and includes a reference to the Bible passage Romans 5:8.
The athlete’s mother, Cheryl Lorenzen, took to Twitter to credit God’s blessings with helping her son become the first Phillies pitcher to throw a no-hitter since 2015. She wrote, “Incredible night, my son. No one is more deserving than you. The Lord has been so good to you! Stay strong in your faith, and keep pushing through!”
In an interview with Renewed Strength Fitness published in early 2016, Lorenzen elaborated on his Christian faith. Detailing how he grew up in a turbulent household with drug-addicted and alcoholic parents, Lorenzen recalled how he “never was taught anything about God” and “never raised in a home where I’d learned anything about God other than He existed.”
As a teenager who drank alcohol and smoked weed, Lorenzen encountered a man preaching about Jesus as he and his friends walked on a pier while high. The man stressed to them that “it was more than just to believe in a God,” explicitly telling them, “You have to serve and live for God.”
He explained, “That was something that hit me harder than anything.” Lorenzen discussed how he “left that place and was really impacted” and concluded that “God had really chosen me to be spoken to.” Following his encounter with the man on the pier, Lorenzen began going to church with his brother. After he started attending church services, Lorenzen discovered that “the message made sense to me for the first time.” Shortly thereafter, he “gave [his] life to the Lord.”