Alex Lange emotional ahead of surgery to end his Detroit Tigers season

Detroit Tigers right-handed reliever Alex Lange wiped tears from his eyes in the clubhouse Friday, just four days before Tuesday’s season-ending surgery in New York to repair an avulsion in his right lat (a tear in the large muscle covering the back) with Yankees head team physician Dr. Christopher Ahmad.

Lange won’t pitch again until the 2025 season, but will miss his teammates more than anything.

“I’m looking forward to watching ball this summer,” Lange, 28, said at Comerica Park. “I watch every game. When you’re away from the boys, it’s tough. You become such like a family. It’s tough. I want to get back and get healthy and help. It’s been pretty cool to be a part of this family. I’m going to miss it.”

And his teammates will miss him.

“He’s a huge part of our bullpen, and he’s a nasty pitcher,” catcher Jake Rogers said. “He’s got literally the best pitch in baseball. It’s a tough loss for us. I’m praying for him. I know he’ll be back even better than before, which I’m excited to see.”

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Lange, diagnosed with a right lat strain, suffered the injury while pitching June 14 with Triple-A Toledo. He was trying to work his way back to the Tigers after getting sent down May 23 because of continued problems with his command and his curveball.

Lange lost his job as the closer with a 4.34 ERA, 17 walks and 21 strikeouts across 18⅔ innings in 21 relief appearances with the Tigers this season. (He notched 26 saves in 32 opportunities in 2023.)

“When you pitch as poorly as I was, you gotta accept your option, go down there and work on some stuff,” Lange said. “We had stuff to clean up. I was giving it up pretty good and costing the boys. To go down there and get right, I felt like I was ready, and then obviously unfortunate events happened.”

Lange took the mound June 14 for the Mud Hens in the seventh inning. He felt pain upon throwing a 96.5 mph sinker — his second-to-last pitch of the season — to the second batter he faced in his ninth outing with Toledo. Lange then struck out John Rave, a 26-year-old in the Kansas City Royals’ organization, with a curveball, but after throwing that pitch, immediately signaled to the dugout for medical attention.

“The heater, I felt it snap off the bone,” Lange said. “The tendon just pulled off the bone. I was like, ‘Uh oh, that’s not good.’ With the time of the pitch clock and everything, I wanted to test it to see what happens. I threw a breaking ball, swing and miss, and knew something was wrong, so I called the trainers out.”

The swing-and-miss curveball for a strikeout of Rave marked the final pitch of Lange’s season.

“The tendon pulled off the bone and retracted five and a half centimeters down the lat,” Lange said. “Go in there, sew it back on, a little duct tape, a little glue.”

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Dating back to June 4, 2023, Lange posted a 4.92 ERA with 51 walks (18% walk rate) and 66 strikeouts (23.3% strikeout rate) across 60⅓ innings in 64 games.

At the time of this year’s May 23 demotion, Lange’s 18% walk rate since last June 4 ranked 46th among 46 relief pitchers with at least 60 innings during that span, while his ERA ranked 44th. He struggled to throw strikes for far too long.

“I feel for him,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “He was working on the things that we asked him to work on, which is finding his breaking ball and throw more strikes. The curveball was hit or miss. He was throwing a few more strikes. When he got hurt, it was a punch in the gut for him and for us.”

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His curveball has the potential to be one of the best breaking balls in baseball because of the swing-and-miss profile, but his curveball hasn’t fooled opponents as often recently because it doesn’t fall off the table like it used to.

Simply put, his curveball lacks downward movement.

It averaged minus-0.1 inches of induced vertical break in MLB and plus-1.7 inches of IVB at the Triple-A level this season. Three years ago, it averaged minus-7.4 inches of IVB in MLB.

Fixing the curveball will have to wait.

“All we can really focus on is getting him healthy and getting him back and having him factor in whenever that is,” Hinch said. “But it was good to see him and see his determination to tackle this part of his career with the intensity that all of us would expect of him.”

Lange will rehab from season-ending lat surgery in Houston — which is where he lives in the offseason — as he aims to report healthy to spring training in 2025.

He sounds confident about his chances of bouncing back.

“It’s a pretty big muscle,” Lange said. “We’ll start with reattaching it to where it’s supposed to be and getting that tendon strong back to that bone. As far as the plan, we’re just going to execute. We’ll deal with those obstacles as they come. I’ll be all right. I’m not too worried.”

Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him @EvanPetzold.

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