There was a time in 2018 or ’19, one of those seasons when he was a top-five reliever in baseball, when Seth Lugo started to wonder if all that success was helping or hurting him in his quest to become a starter.
“I was like, What do I gotta do?” he says now. “Do I need to be better—or worse?”
He recounts this story standing in front of his locker at the All-Star Game, having spent the past year and a half answering his own question. Lugo, 34, always believed he could start, and during his seven years with the New York Mets, teammates and coaches and manager Terry Collins lobbied for him, but the team felt he was too crucial in the bullpen to give him a shot in the rotation. But this year with the Kansas City Royals, after a season starting for the San Diego Padres, he finished the first half as the major league leader in wins (11) and ERA+ (174), and third in the American League among pitchers in WAR (4.2).
Did he see this coming?
“Yeah!” he says, sounding surprised by the question.
He may have been the only one. Even those advocates probably could not have foreseen this star turn. And Lugo admits it might not have been in him in those Mets days—he is a more mature pitcher, with a different arsenal, than he was then.
“I don’t know if I’m less stubborn or more stubborn,” he says with a laugh. “Maybe a little bit of both.”
The former 34th-round pick prepared every offseason as a starter, and he reminded anyone who would listen that he wanted a chance. He got one in 2017, after a good debut season as a swingman. But he pitched to a 4.71 ERA in 101 1/3 innings, and when Zack Wheeler opened the ’18 season with five innings of one-run, six-strikeout ball for the Triple A Las Vegas 51s, Lugo was back to the bullpen, where he stayed for half a decade.
“They were like, ‘You’re too valuable out there,’” he says. “I was like, ‘Well, Jake [deGrom, who won National League Cy Young Awards for the Mets as a starter in 2018 and ’19] would be really valuable out there! That’s not a reason.’”
The team also wondered how his secondary offerings would hold up over seven innings. Lugo believed he could change his repertoire to keep hitters off-balance. But he wanted to pitch more than he wanted to start. “So I took the playing time over the perfect position,” he says. He ended up with a 2.91 ERA in over 300 innings in relief. He insists he harbors no animosity toward the Mets; indeed, he has reached out to several former coaches from those days to thank them for their help.
Lugo became a free agent after the 2022 season, and he prioritized teams with an opening in the rotation, eventually signing a one-year, $7.5 million deal with a player option with the Padres. (They agreed on incentives for games started—and also, just in case, for appearances as a reliever.) He had a 4.10 ERA in his first eight starts, and then he caught a lucky break: He strained his left calf muscle running to cover first base.
“I felt like I was pitching like I did my whole career,” he says. “And then I went on the [injured list] last year and played around and felt like I found some things I’ve been trying to find my whole career.”
Namely: a sweeper, which he can throw three different ways, to give him what he estimates at 11 different pitch options. He was a tinkerer as a kid, always messing around with different grips, but as a pro, he found it hard to experiment in season, while he was trying to win, and out of season, while he was trying to build up strength. But a strained calf was perfect, because his arm was fine, he wasn’t pitching in games and he was in midseason form. Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla suggested a few grips, and one clicked immediately.
“I was like, ‘That’s it,’” Lugo says. “‘That’s all I’ve been missing. I’ve been searching for this forever. I’m ready.’”
His ERA the rest of the way was 3.35, and he declined his player option after the season. He signed with the Royals for two years and $30 million, with a $15 million player option. Seven months later, he has been just about the best pitcher in the league.
But as he soaked in the environment at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, he wasn’t thinking about all the people he had proven wrong. He was thinking about proving himself right.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Seth Lugo's Bet on Himself Has Resulted in Sudden Success As a Starter.
