Seth Lugo, one of baseball’s most underrated pitchers, is sticking around Kansas City after all.
The Royals reached a multi-year contract extension with Lugo on Sunday night, according to ESPN’s Jeff Passan. Further specifics on his new deal are not yet known. Though Lugo was widely considered one of the top trade candidates ahead of the deadline this summer, he’ll now be in Kansas City for years to come.
Lugo was under contract until the end of this season with a salary of $15 million.
Between his success and the Royals’ struggles, Lugo loomed as one of the trade deadline’s biggest prizes as long as the club was willing to deal him. His career has flourished since joining Kansas City, where he finished as the runner-up for the AL Cy Young Award last season behind Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal.
As a soft-throwing right-hander who doesn’t strike out many batters and sees most of his balls in play go in the air, Lugo is hardly anyone’s vision of an ace. However, his seemingly bottomless arsenal of pitches keeps batters off balance enough to post quality starts on a regular basis.
The Royals hold a 52-54 record heading into Monday’s matchup with the Atlanta Braves, which has them sitting in third in the AL Central race. Lugo is set to take the mound next on Tuesday night for the second game of that three-game series.
Baseball Savant identifies an incredible 10 pitches Lugo has used this season: four-seam fastball, curveball, sinker, cutter, changeup, slurve, slider, slow curve, sweeper and splitter. Pitch identification isn’t an exact science, but all that goes to show how many looks Lugo can present on any given pitch. And he’s a Gold Glover to boot.
The results speak for themselves. No pitcher faced more batters in the AL last season than Lugo and he’s on pace to post a similarly strong season this year with the Royals. A lot of advanced stats don’t love the 35-year-old’s chances at continuing this success, but there are always players who routinely overperform on their peripherals. A player with Lugo’s approach could easily be one of them.
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