On Tuesday night, while much of the country tuned in to see Kamala Harris debate Donald Trump, I watched an even more lopsided performance from the upper deck at Yankee Stadium, where the Royals’ Seth Lugo utterly dominated the Yankees, holding them to just three hits, walking none and striking out 10 over seven innings in a 5-0 Kansas City win.
Through six innings, the only Yankee to reach base was Gleyber Torres, who blooped soft singles into center field on Lugo’s fifth pitch of the game and then, roughly an hour and 20 minutes later, on his 86th pitch; in between, Lugo retired 17 straight hitters. It was the latest in a season full of great outings from the righty, who at 34 years old is having a career year while pushing the Royals toward their first postseason berth since 2015. Lugo’s seven scoreless frames ran his total to a major league-leading 193 innings while lowering his ERA to 2.94, second in the AL behind only Tarik Skubal.
Meanwhile, he’s third in WAR with 4.4, 0.2 behind teammate Cole Ragans, fifth in FIP (3.27), seventh in walk rate (5.8%), and eighth in strikeouts (169) despite punching out hitters at a modest 21.7% rate. He’s also tied with Skubal for the league lead in wins (16), and so by our Cy Young Projection model and its multiple variants, his suite of stats puts him second in the AL to Skubal and a comfortable margin ahead of Ragans, Logan Gilbert, and Framber Valdez.
All of this is happening in the first year of a three-year, $45 million contract he signed with the Royals last December, and in just his third season as a starter after largely being typecast as a workhorse reliever during his seven seasons with the Mets (2016–22).
Knocking back a couple of beers from my partial season ticket group’s usual perch in Section 422 affords a different perspective than in the press box or at home. So when Sports Reference’s Katie Sharp noted that the game was the first time the Yankees had ever been held to zero walks and zero extra-base hits while striking out at least 14 times, I decided to take a closer look at Lugo’s night to gain a fuller appreciation of what’s made him so successful lately.
The Yankees offense has had its issues, but the team nonetheless leads the AL in scoring (5.03 runs per game) and leads the majors in wRC+ (116). The top two hitters in baseball by wRC+, Aaron Judge (211 wRC+) and Juan Soto (180 wRC+), are driving that, but they’ve had a stronger supporting cast around them since acquiring Jazz Chisholm Jr. from the Marlins. Chisholm entered Tuesday having produced a 161 wRC+ since debuting with the Yankees on July 28, with Torres (111 wRC+) working to atone for his dreadful first half, and Austin Wells (132 wRC+) and Giancarlo Stanton (104 wRC+) providing additional support.
Tuesday night’s lineup even featured freshly recalled rookie Jasson Domínguez in left field in place of the long-slumping Alex Verdugo.
With a four-seam fastball that topped out at 94.9 mph and averaged 92.5, Lugo didn’t overpower the Yankees so much as he kept them off balance with an exceptional command of his dizzying array of offerings. According to Statcast, he used nine different pitches while checking the boxes of a vintage Greg Maddux. Work quickly? His pace of 15.7 seconds between pitches was six-tenths of a second below his majors-leading average of 16.3 seconds. Change speeds? He landed at least one pitch in every 1-mph bucket between 74 and 95 mph save for the 83- and 84-mph ones, which at least gives him something to work on next time. Move the batter’s eye level? Use both sides of the plate? Check and check.
“It was just hard for everyone to get a bead on him,” said Yankees manager Aaron Boone afterward. “He’s not making mistakes. It’s hard to really look for one pitch because he’s throwing the kitchen sink at you, and he’s changing speeds on you, and he’s got a lead, and he knows how to attack with that. He beat us tonight.” Lugo faced 24 batters, a dozen of whom opened their plate appearances by taking called strikes. Note the spray and the array of pitches: From among the righties, the highest and lowest strikes there, both on four-seamers, were against Stanton.
The cutter and high slurve were both against Torres, the latter shortly before his second hit, while the outermost four-seamer — which was nonetheless on the border of Gameday zone 5, which is to say middle-middle — was the first pitch he threw to Judge in the first inning. He threw five different offerings to Judge at five different heights in that plate appearance alone before striking him out. Lugo’s 1-2 curve to Judge was so far off the plate it didn’t make the Gameday graph, but you’ll see it in the video: Among the lefties, the lowest two pitches, a first-inning sinker and a sixth-inning curve, were thrown to Soto. Lugo struck out the slugger on a high foul tip in the first inning, again following another well-scattered set of offerings that included a first-pitch called strike; he immediately moved from that sinker on the lower, inner edge to a cutter on the upper, outer corner: Soto did put a charge into an 0-2 sinker in the sixth, hitting a 103-mph fly ball to left that was chased down by MJ Melendez just short of the warning track; that was the only barrel Lugo surrendered all night, and one of just three hard-hit balls.
As for the other lefties in the illustration, the cutter, curve, and outermost slurve were to Wells, who grounded out, struck out, and, in the seventh inning, collected the Yankees’ other hit, a 101.5-mph single. The highest first-pitch slurve was to Chisholm in the fifth; he struck out in that plate appearance. The high sinker was to Anthony Rizzo, the only one of these half-dozen players who hasn’t been part of the aforementioned above-average hitters lately; he ended up striking out in that sixth-inning PA. Rizzo aside, Lugo challenged the Yankees’ best hitters in the zone and immediately put them behind in the count, setting the tone for the night.
Of the 12 other 0-0 pitches Lugo threw, three were swinging strikes, all on the edge of the zone or just slightly outside, and four were fouls: That’s 19 first-pitch strikes not in play to those 24 hitters, plus one — a sweeper to Anthony Volpe — that was popped up for an easy out in the sixth; Volpe also took the only borderline pitch of Lugo’s that was called a ball, a third-inning four-seamer that preceded a foul-tip strikeout.
Fourteen of the hitters that fell behind 0-1 to Lugo by one means or another ended up down 0-2. In all, the righty generated 14 whiffs (four apiece with the four-seamer, cutter, and curve, plus one changeup and one slurve) from among his 51 swings (27% whiff rate) and 26 called strikes for a CSW rate of 38.1%, nearly 10 points above his season rate of 28.3%. He struck out 10 of 24 hitters, including two strikeouts of Judge and one of Soto, and held the Yankees to a feeble 82.9 mph average exit velocity on contact.
