King of the eight-pitch club: Royals player Seth Lugo rides to All-Star success with huge arsenal

One day earlier this season, Kansas City Royals starter Seth Lugo listened to a reporter go through his arsenal of pitches and list the assets in one of the most extensive portfolios in baseball.

There was, of course, the curveball, the pitch he once mastered by holding a single tennis ball can in his right hand and spinning it overhead. He had learned the drill as a boy in Louisiana. A college coach had shown it to Lugo’s father, who then taught it to him. Lugo’s curveball is one of the best in the world, spinning more than any other at more than 3,300 revolutions per minute. Among starters, only Tyler Glasnow of the Los Angeles Dodgers has one that scores better by advanced measures.

So, yeah, the curveball. That was one.

There was also a sinker – which the New York Mets said he shouldn’t throw – a cutter he added this year, and (deep breath) a four-seam fastball, a slider, a sweeper, a changeup, And a slurve. According to Baseball Savant, Lugo throws eight different types of pitches, which puts him, along with Chris Bassitt and Yu Darvish, in baseball for the most pitches. But as Lugo listened to the list, he paused to correct the recording.

“Well, I think there are a few more,” he said in a clubhouse. “But they kind of blur together a little bit.”

In baseball’s era of pitch design, the 34-year-old Lugo has become the sport’s answer to Doc Brown from Back to the Future, a mad scientist always searching for the perfect pitch shape, an intellectual inventor who was underappreciated in his day – until recently. Lugo, a first-time All-Star, began the week as the best major league starter in ERA (2.21), quality starts (15), innings pitched (122) and, unofficially, in number of pitches.

“There are actually 10 different types of pitches,” said Royals pitching coach Brian Sweeney.

Bassitt, a former teammate in New York, calls Lugo a “tinkerer,” while Mets pitching coach Jeremy Hefner said the right-hander is “one of the most creative thinkers I know.”

His dominant performance in 2024 has kept the surging Royals in the playoff race and, in a league of aging and injured aces, made him a strong candidate for the American League starting spot at Tuesday’s All-Star Game in Texas. His breakout performance has also revealed the cruel irony of his career: The pitcher who has thrown more than anyone else, who has spent all those hours poring over scouting reports and studying swings, was confined to the Mets’ bullpen for years, where he was both a good major league reliever and unable to utilize the full breadth of his arsenal.

“His journey is fascinating to me,” Sweeney said. “When his name came up for us in the offseason, I thought, ‘I love this journey. Because it’s not typical. He had to earn the right to do a lot of different things.'”

Once an unlikely major league prospect, Lugo made his Mets debut at age 26 and spent most of his seven seasons as a bullpen starter. He didn’t get a chance to prove himself in the rotation until last season when he signed with San Diego. But in all his years as a reliever, he never wavered in his belief that he could start. He told pitching coaches he still considered himself a starter. He prepared that way, too. He wanted to be a complete pitcher, embrace the cat-and-mouse game, adjust to the umpire’s zone, pitch long in games and experience the rollercoaster of managerial decisions.

While he was waiting for his chance, he realized that if he ever gave up his dream of being a regular, it would be like giving up the sport as a whole.

In February, when the Royals convened for spring training, the club’s pitching coaches were looking for a way to liven up the boring days of pitching fielding practice. They decided to hold a competition in which the pitching team’s best athletes would be ranked on their performance.

The name above seemed like a surprise: Seth Lugo?

“It made everyone so angry,” Sweeney said.

The argument was simple: When Lugo was in high school in Bossier City, Louisiana, he excelled at the rare combination of baseball, football and soccer. How many pitchers could kick a soccer ball, punt a football, spin a breaking ball, play an excellent short game on the golf course and then take money from their friends at a game of pool?

“He’s a great pool player,” said Mike Diaz, one of Lugo’s former coaches at Centenary University. “He’s got all the shots.”

Since childhood, Lugo was a preternaturally coordinated kid with a rare blend of athletic ability. What he didn’t seem to be, however, was a future major league player. When he graduated from high school, his best college baseball options were a junior college or Centenary, a nearby school in Shreveport. When he didn’t perform well as a freshman, he was nearly kicked off the team.

Lugo was big, had a strong arm and a curveball with a lot of bite. But he didn’t throw many strikes, and his ERA was often above 5.00. It wasn’t until a duel against future major leaguer Blake Treinen, then a pitcher at South Dakota State, that he caught the attention of major league scouts. The Mets drafted Lugo in the 34th round in 2011—1,032nd overall. But a year later, he was far from the major leagues. In 2012, he underwent spinal fusion for a back condition called spondylolisthesis. He was bedridden or couch-bound for months while recovering, streaming TV shows and playing guitar. But when Lugo visited Diaz later that year, his former coach was amazed by one thing: Lugo was still convinced he would pitch for the Mets.

“I didn’t think he ever thought he wouldn’t do it,” Diaz said.

Lugo proved himself right in 2016, when he debuted for a Mets team that had been to the World Series the previous October. He made eight relief appearances in 2016 and another 18 in 2017, returning from a partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament to post a 4.71 ERA. But in 2018, the Mets had a rotation that included Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom, Zack Wheeler, Noah Syndergaard, Steven Matz and Jason Vargas. They also had a significant problem in the bullpen.

“We desperately needed someone like him in the bullpen,” said Dave Eiland, who served as the Mets’ pitching coach for two years this season. “When I got there, the bullpen was just in a state of disrepair. And while I was there, they really didn’t do anything to fix the problem.”

Lugo spent seven seasons with the Mets, but only started 38 times in 275 games. (Drew Hallowell / Getty Images)

Lugo developed into one of the Mets’ most consistent relievers, and he also kept reminding Eiland that he wanted to start. The questions and talk of a chance continued when Hefner replaced Eiland in 2020.

“If not monthly, then weekly,” Hefner said.

More opportunities arose when Wheeler left for Philadelphia and Syndergaard’s performance declined. But as the years went by, Lugo became more established in the bullpen, the front office experienced constant turnover, and after owner Steve Cohen took control, the Mets continued to sign free-agent starters. The Mets, Hefner said, followed the evidence in front of them that Lugo was a valuable reliever. In some ways, his success made it easier to take the path of least resistance.

“I don’t know if regret is the right word,” Hefner said. “But looking back now, it’s easy to say we should have given him a little more leeway in spring training to establish himself as a starter.”

It wasn’t just that the Mets were risk-averse. Lugo also offered an unusual profile. He is both a throwback – he uses what Hefner calls the “kitchen sink approach” – and a pitcher whose talent for spin is easier to measure today in the age of pitch tracking.

Most starters don’t manage to use 10 different pitches. But Lugo has an imagination that is rare even among intelligent pitchers. The Mets, for example, tried to reduce his sinker use based on metrics and industry trends. But Lugo believed in its utility against certain hitters.

“With all these different mixes and every pitch and every swing, another team could say I’m wrong, but I feel like I’m unpredictable,” he said. “You can’t say, ‘This is a percentage thing, here’s what he’s throwing.’ Because every hitter is different.”

Lugo is part of a growing group of pitchers who throw three different fastballs — a four-seam, a sinker and a cutter he learned from Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla. The cutter is another weapon to keep hitters guessing, and it seems to be lessening the penalty as Lugo makes his third appearance in a lineup, helping him pitch longer in games.

“Everyone knows he can spin a baseball,” Sweeney said, “but which one will it be? Will it be the vert sweeper, the regular sweeper, the curveball or the hard slider?”

The main beneficiary of Lugo’s sudden dominance was the Royals, who signed him to a three-year, $45 million contract last winter. (Lugo has an opt-out clause after 2025.) Club management believed Lugo could help stabilize their rotation after he posted a 3.57 ERA in 26 starts last season. But they didn’t anticipate how his intellectual nature would affect the rest of the rotation, nor did they realize how hot his competitive spirit burns beneath his calm facade.

“He has something to prove,” Sweeney said. “And when Seth has something to prove, he usually proves he’s right.”

Lugo is still a seeker at heart, and one day this season he found personal validation in an unlikely place: He came across a statistic that said fielders brought in to pitch as cleanup pitches had thrown 16 straight scoreless innings. To Lugo, that made sense. If a hitter sees 100 miles per hour all game, he’ll be able to call the time. But if a pitcher keeps the hitter guessing – if you show him something different, like 10 different pitches in six innings – that can sow doubt. That’s when you win.

“Everything is relative,” he said. “Everything is a matter of timing. As soon as you start thinking about something, your brain slows down.”

(Top photo of Lugo: Eakin Howard / Getty Images)