Former Met Seth Lugo certainly not a pitcher Yankees would like to see in playoffs
Seth Lugo of the Kansas City Royals pitches against the Yankees at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Winning the AL East, already crucial for the Yankees, felt even more urgent after Tuesday night’s 5-0 loss to the Royals.
Sure the first-round bye is important. A few days to push the reset button can be a big help come October. But the truly scary part about winding up as a wild card?
The possibility of a rematch with Seth Lugo, as the discarded Met now Royals ace thoroughly baffled the Yankees’ A lineup for seven innings Tuesday, looking far more comfortable in the Bronx than anyone wearing pinstripes. He allowed only three singles, two of them to Gleyber Torres, and the pair were split by a stretch where Lugo retired 17 straight in stunningly breezy fashion.
Lugo struck out 10, didn’t allow a walk and the Yankees never had a runner reach second base. It shouldn’t be that easy. Not in the Bronx, and especially not for some pitcher from sleepy, small-market Kansas City.
But that’s what makes Lugo so dangerous. He’s not that guy. Lugo’s got big city street cred, having spent seven years across town with the Mets. And talking to him after Tuesday’s victory -- his 16th this season, tied for the MLB lead with the Tigers’ Tarik Skubal and Atlanta’s Chris Sale -- you could tell there’s still some blue-and-orange running through his veins, the part that makes him enjoy silencing the Stadium a little bit more than just another visitor.
“I would say there was some anticipation to pitch in New York City again,” Lugo said.
The Yankees are one of the few teams to actually beat Lugo this season, denting him for eight hits and four runs in a 4-2 win back on June 10 at Kauffman Stadium, but they could barely touch him this time around. He threw a total of 105 pitches, and as usual, it was Lugo’s mystifying variety that had the Yankees muttering to themselves as they returned to the dugout.
Statcast had Lugo throwing nine different pitches Tuesday night, and the list read like the menu at a Manhattan diner: cutter, curve, four-seam fastball, changeup, slurve, sinker, slider, sweeper, splitter. Knowing that the computer doesn’t always get it right, I asked Lugo afterward if that was the right count. He said it was actually 10, one short of his full repertoire of 11, so he spared the Yankees the extra pitch in his arsenal.
Then again, if Statcast couldn’t even figure out what pitches Lugo was throwing, what chance did the Yankees have of hitting them? Apparently close to zero, and Lugo knew he had them in a hopeless place.
“I was locating all my pitches,” Lugo said. “I don’t think there was a pitch that I didn’t think I could throw where I wanted. It was just one of those nights I had everything working.”
Everything for Lugo is a lot. Then factor in the velocity range, from the top speed of his 94.9 mph four-seamer to the crawling pace of his 77.3 mph sweeper, and Lugo becomes a very destabilizing pitcher. This was the first game in Yankees’ history where they had zero walks, zero extra-base hits and 14 or more strikeouts. Lugo didn’t go the distance, but he had the Yankees so dizzy, the bullpen didn’t have to do much to finish them off.
“He was pounding the strike zone,” Juan Soto said. “He was putting up strike one and strike to most of the guys. It’s tough with a guy who has like nine pitches, and he was showing every pitch today. He was throwing everything, he was confident about it. He just kept us off balance.”
Hard to imagine the Mets employed Lugo for seven years, but never realized what they had. That was partly due to having two owners, three GMs and four managers during his Flushing tenure, and all of them settled on making Lugo a relief pitcher rather than a rotation mainstay, mostly due to concerns about his durability. The injuries ranged from elbow cleanups to shoulder tendinitis, and limited him to only 38 starts out of 275 appearances for the Mets.
Ultimately, Lugo left for a one-year, $15 million with the Padres, then he parlayed that into a three-year, $45 million with the Royals this past winter. Safe to say he’s worth every penny after Tuesday was his career-high 30th start and, ironically enough, Lugo leads the majors with 193 innings. Something that was unimaginable by the people running the Mets a few years ago.
“That’s huge,” Lugo said. “So far, to make every start and pitch into games consistently, that’s really important for a starter to do that. And it’s a good feeling to be able to prove myself and do that.”
As much as Lugo was sending a message back to his Flushing employer, he made a serious impression on the Yankees, who shouldn’t want to cross paths with him again anytime soon. And risk facing all 11 pitches next time instead of just 10.
Lugo is now 2-1 with a 1.90 ERA in four career starts against the Yankees. They better hope there isn’t a fifth come October.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
