Before nearly winning Cy Young, this KC Royal’s improbable path included great doubts
To be sure, Seth Lugo was a fine high school athlete at Parkway High in Bossier City, Louisiana.
He was a state finalist in the high jump, a two-time District 1-4A MVP as a soccer goalie and a good enough punter to receive a scholarship offer from Southeastern Louisiana.
Then there was his fourth-best sport.
“I didn’t consider myself to be that good at baseball,” Lugo said matter-of-factly in an interview with The Star..
No wonder none of that portended what was a long time coming: the 1,032nd pick in the 2011 MLB Draft finishing second in the American League Cy Young Award voting at age 34 with the Royals last season by navigating an odyssey laden with hitches and hazards.
Still mired in the minor leagues in 2015, in fact, Lugo thought baseball “might not ever turn around” and contemplated either going back to school or applying for delivery jobs with UPS or FedEx.
“I started thinking about where I was going to start a career,” he said.
From there and then to here and now makes for a rather preposterous ascension.
“It’s kind of like the American dream,” said Mike Diaz, who coached Lugo at now-Division III Centenary.
‘He can do better’
Not that Lugo wasn’t enthralled with baseball.
For instance, an aunt likes to tell the story of taking him to a Texas Rangers game when he was 4 or 5 years old.
“I was the only little kid that would sit there and just stare at the whole game,” he said. “I wouldn’t take my eyes off the field. I wasn’t going around eating ice cream or popcorn or anything like that. It was just locked into the game.”
His first apparent mention in a newspaper came as he was entering fourth grade, when the Bossier Press-Tribune featured him in a photo as the winner of the GIANTS OF TOMORROW competition based on throwing, catching, hitting and running.
And he can trace the imagination that led to his absurd 11-pitch arsenal today back to playing Wiffle ball as a kid.
“The way I pitch is how I used to play in the back yard — even making up different pitches, changing speeds,” said Lugo, who was 10 when he began throwing a curveball — with an actual baseball — thanks to the tutelage of his father, Ben.
Even for all that, though, a few elements weren’t quite in place. At least not yet.
For one thing, his velocity hadn’t quite blossomed. He was good — all-district as a senior — but hardly irresistible. He received zero Division I scholarship offers.
Perhaps most revealing of the circumstances: As an assistant coach and main recruiter at Centenary, then in Division I, Diaz remembers scouting Lugo and seeing his maximum velocity in the low 80s and thinking he’s “alright, but nothing blows you away.”
When he left early that day to help run Centenary’s practice, he remembered with a laugh, Ben Lugo chased him down in the parking lot.
“‘Coach, Coach, I know he didn’t do well; he can do better,’” Diaz recalled him saying before reassuring the father he’d be back in touch.
‘Give me one more chance’
Lugo indeed ended up at Centenary … as a walk-on with an academic scholarship who decided to major in geology. For a good while, he could see himself as a “Landman” if baseball didn’t work out.
In fact, for a time his hopes to play pro baseball seemed more a vague yearning than some sort of all-consuming quest. He had turned down the only partial scholarship offer he received, to Barton Community College in Kansas, because, well …
“I didn’t want to leave home, go somewhere by myself and ‘I’m a junior college baseball player,’ you know?” Lugo said. “I didn’t think in terms like that.”
As Diaz saw it, Lugo wasn’t any more lasered in through his freshman year at Centenary.
After Lugo finished that 2009 season with a 5.45 ERA in eight appearances, head coach Ed McCann and Diaz called him in for a meeting.
“We just said, ‘Hey, man, we can do one or two things: We can get rid of you, or you can turn the corner,’” said Diaz, who succeeded McCann as head coach in 2011. “‘Because we’re not dealing with guys that aren’t all in, that don’t want to work out and do everything we want to, whether it’s mechanically or physically. And then we just don’t want guys that don’t want to work on their own.’”
The words resonated with Lugo.
“I’ll never forget it,” Diaz said. “He said, ‘Give me one more chance. You won’t be disappointed.’ ”
And he wasn’t.
‘The Seth Lugo Beach Surfing Rule’
Whether it was from what Diaz likes to call that “come-to-Jesus meeting” or Lugo just figured it out on his own, or maybe a combination of both, Diaz can chart a shift from that point forward.
“His trajectory started to go from bottom left to upper right,” he said. “It just kind of went in that climb.”
Suddenly, Lugo worked harder, cared more about his conditioning and wanted to learn more about pitching.
As he bought in deeper, presto, that fall he began seeing an uptick in velocity and started to scratch at his potential.
All these years later, it’s a pivot point for which Lugo remains grateful.
“I got lucky with a couple good coaches there,” he said, “that saw something in me that I didn’t see.”
Not that he suddenly was a finished product, “an angel or Superman,” Diaz reminded.
Because ever since a 2011 trip to Hawaii, Diaz has invoked the “Seth Lugo Beach Surfing Rule” when his team is near an ocean.
“I’m not sure you understand how strong a tide is when you have to swim against it,” Diaz said.
In a game at Hawaii with scouts watching, Lugo was “electric” in the first couple innings and touching 93 mph with his fastball.
By the third or fourth inning, though, he was fizzling out in the low 80s and getting pelted.
At first, Diaz wondered if something was wrong with his arm.
But then Lugo fessed up that he’d been out surfing for at least an hour earlier that day.
“Well, I’m always doing stuff,” Lugo said with a laugh as he remembered the moment with little regret. “A five-day trip to Hawaii, I had fun instead of focusing on playing baseball.”
With a smile, he added, “I was so exhausted. But it was fun!”
‘He’s got to be talking about me’
Just the same, that was a stray sort of moment after he’d turned a crucial corner. And a few weeks later, Diaz told one of his longtime connections with the New York Mets that “this kid’s got makeup” and a lot “left in the tank” and got him invited to a prospect camp.
Nevermind that Lugo’s overall stats at Centenary were pedestrian: a 5.31 ERA and an 8-13 record with four saves.
Between Diaz’s recommendation and Lugo at the camp clocking at 95 mph for the first time, the Mets after essentially seeing him for the first time two weeks before the draft reckoned he was worth giving a chance.
Albeit in the 34th round, which no longer exists since the draft was cut to 20 rounds a few years ago.
By then, though, Lugo didn’t perceive himself as the 1,032nd pick.
When the Mets farm director’s orientation speech suggested one person among them might make it in the big leagues, Lugo thought, “He’s got to be talking about me.”
Turned out he was … but not before a few more stumbling blocks.
After faring well (5-2, 3.66 ERA) in rookie ball in 2011, a dormant back injury resurfaced with back spasms and leg pain and beyond.
“I started losing feeling in my leg; I could hardly walk,” he said. “At that point, it became a quality of life concern rather than a baseball concern.”
Lugo was diagnosed with spondylolisthesis, which occurs when vertebrae slip out of alignment and create pressure on others. It was repaired by spinal fusion, but Lugo missed the entire 2012 season and spent three months in bed at the home he’d lived in with his mother since 2009.
Because of time elapsed and all the medication he was on, Lugo calls that a distant memory now.
Even so, how he looked at it was another link in his journey.
Beyond relishing the fact “that living room was mine” for three months, he said with a laugh, and getting into “Game of Thrones” and enjoying a lot of video games in that span, Lugo was eager to get back to work.
So much so that, perhaps ill-consideredly, he started getting back on his feet a couple months before he was supposed to.
Moreover, the surgery helped ease his mechanics and delivery. And the whole process bolstered his confidence.
“I saw that as a blessing: ‘OK, the team’s invested in me to get healthy; I have a chance,’ ” he said. “It put me in a good mindset.”
He’d need it over the next few years.
‘That’s one of his secrets’
Even as Lugo gradually advanced deliberately through the Mets system, he became increasingly frustrated with being passed over by players he believed he should have been promoted over.
So by the end of his 2015 season, when the Royals beat the Mets in the World Series, Lugo was confronting the possibility he’d never make it.
“Everybody’s got to have belief in who they are,” Diaz said. “But you’ve also got to have a contingency plan. If you’re not, you’re an idiot. He’s not an idiot. He’s a really bright guy.”
By then, though, Lugo also was too emotionally invested to let go.
What once was just a faint want had become a point of pride and passion.
“How does a 30th-rounder, or whatever he was, make it? He’s got inner belief, right?” Diaz said. “He gets better mentally. He figures out how to pitch, right?
“And the other thing with Seth (is) … he’s silent but deadly. He doesn’t show his fire, but I promise you he’s a competitor.”
He added, “That’s one of his secrets. This dude thrives under pressure. He doesn’t cower down.”
Ten months after Lugo wondered if he should move on, he was called up and made his major-league debut with two shutout innings against the Cubs on July 1, 2016.
The rest is history still in the making for Lugo, who spent most of his Mets career in the bullpen (with a 2.91 ERA in 237 appearances) before becoming a strong starter with the Padres in 2023 and getting better yet last season.
His perseverance and rise aren’t things he wants to dwell on, figuring that’s stuff to try to put together one day when this is all over.
But the arc tells its own story.
Especially about the power of resolve and will and the capacity to change for the better.
“This generation doesn’t handle adversity very well,” Diaz laments. “They make a lot of excuses and don’t want to push through. First sign of trouble, they want to reset like it’s Nintendo or something.”
He added, “Seth figured it out that if you want to be successful in life, you’ve got to put a lot of work into it and sacrifice some things that you’re doing to make that dream possible.”
And, at last, a reality.
This story was originally published March 20, 2025 at 6:30 AM.