What a pair of starts.
While the Royals offense has been slow to start this year, the pitching has been phenomenal. Kansas City has won 9 of its last 10 games, and has done so on the back of top-to-bottom excellent pitching performances. I thought about awarding the entire pitching staff But for the last week of April, I’ve got to award it to one pitcher in particular: Seth Lugo.
Lugo started two games over the last week—yesterday against the Tampa Bay Rays and April 25 against the Houston Astros. Against the Astros, Lugo had maybe the best game of his career: 8 shutout innings with only four baserunners allowed. And against the Rays, Lugo went 6 strong innings with two earned runs and five strikeouts against zero walks.
In total, Lugo tossed 14 innings, struck out 13, and allowed two runs. That’ll do, as they say.
Lugo’s career has been a meandering one. He debuted as a 26-year-old for the New York Mets in 2016, where he started some games and pitched out of the pen for the rest. By 2019, he was a full-time reliever. Lugo didn’t make another start until 2023, when he threw 146.1 innings for the Padres.
Kansas City saw even more late-blooming potential and a sweet spot in the free agent market and signed him to a two-year deal with a player option. And last year, Lugo was selected to his first All-Star Game and was the Cy Young runner up.
One of the things I’m trying to do more of this year is to sit back and enjoy the good baseball. Bobby Witt Jr. is going to end up an all-time great and is at the height of his powers. But players like Lugo are worth watching, too, especially since Royals fans sat through so much bad pitching over the years. Lugo throws the kitchen sink, and against the Rays Statcast picked up 10 different pitch types from him, only two of which were used more than one fifth of the time.
This is absolutely hilarious.
— Craig Brown (@craigbrownkc.bsky.social) 2025-05-01T18:49:38.353Z
Lugo is central to the Royals’ hope of winning the AL Central and going back to the playoffs. Hopefully, he can keep it up. And who knows—maybe he’ll even win the Cy Young this year.