Two days ago Nestor Lorant earned the Florida State League’s Pitcher of the Week award for his five shutout inning performance against Jupiter. Last Thursday he allowed just one hit, didn’t walk anyone, and he had five strikeouts. At the time I wore that it may be a few days, but that given the month of June that he had he may very well be getting some more hardware. And sure enough, I’m not quite as dumb as I look. The Florida State League and Minor League Baseball announced that Lorant was the league’s Pitcher of the Month for June.
It’s been an outstanding season for Nestor Lorant. While he hasn’t made a start this season for Daytona, he’s piggybacked on all of Adam Serwinowski’s starts, he’s thrown a starters workload this season. The Tortugas right-hander had thrown 33.2 innings entering June. In those nine outings he had a 1.87 ERA and had held opponents to a .612 OPS. Outstanding performance across the board.
Lorant began June with 4.0 shutout innings against Jupiter that saw him give up four hits, walk one batter, and strike out six. The next two outings were even better. He threw 4.0 perfect innings against St. Lucie with six strikeouts and followed that up by throwing 5.0 hitless innings with two walks and three strikeouts against Palm Beach. On June 20th he had a hiccup of sorts when he allowed one earned run in 3.1 innings of relief. And then he capped off the month with his 5.0 shutout innings last week that earned him the Player of the Week award.
All told he posted a 0.42 ERA in 21.1 innings, allowed six hits, walked three batters, and he struck out 24 of the 73 hitters he faced during June. Opponents went 6-for-69 against him on the month, posting a triple-slash line of .087/.137/.159. That’s a .296 OPS against for the month for those who didn’t want to do the math. Pure and complete dominance.
The 22-year-old Venezuelan has now thrown 55.0 innings on the year. He’s got a 6-2 record to go along with a 1.31 ERA, just 33 hits allowed, he’s walked 11 batters but two of those were intentional, and he’s struck out 64. For the season opponents are hitting just .175/.228/.270 when he’s on the mound. His splits are pretty even, too. Right-handed hitters have a .490 OPS against him this season and lefties are sitting just a bit higher with a .509 OPS against him.