Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
Following a scary fourth inning when Tylor Megill left the game due to right shoulder discomfort, and Chasen Shreve allowed all three inherited runners to score, Seth Lugo was brought in. Lugo’s struggled for most of the year but put together his best outing of the year on Thursday night. Across two innings pitched, Lugo gave up one hit and struck out four, while walking no one. It was the first time Lugo had four strikeouts in an outing since 2019.
As you can see from the stat below provided by our own Michael Mayer, a big reason for Lugo’s success on Thursday came from his high-spin curve. During the outing, Lugo threw 13 curves that resulted in four whiffs (50% whiff), one called strike, one foul ball, and three balls in play with an average exit velocity of just 76 mph.
Seth Lugo had 3 curveballs with a spin rate of at least 3400 rpms tonight, giving him 20 such pitches on the season.
All other major league pitchers have a combined 12 pitches this season of at least 3400 rpms.
— Mike Mayer (@mikemayer22) June 17, 2022
Lugo lowered his season ERA to 3.25 and managed to keep the Mets in the game following Megill’s four runs allowed early on. Lugo was a staple in the Mets’ bullpen from 2018 to 2019, going 10-8 with a 2.68 ERA with 207 strikeouts in 115 games across 181 1/3 innings pitched. But from 2020 to 2021, Lugo’s numbers did a complete 180 as his ERA during that timeframe was 4.23 in 83 innings of work across 62 games, while striking out 102 batters.
Lugo’s strikeouts are down this season (8.8 K/9, but his walks are also way down to 2.0 BB/9 from 3.7 in 2021. Another reason for Lugo’s success in 2022 has been his ability to dominate hitters with runners in scoring position, they have just a .367 OPS in those situations this year.
Seeing Lugo stepping up, and lately really, has been great to see. Over his last 10 games, Lugo’s appeared in 12 2/3 innings, has given up two earned runs off of nine hits, and has struck out 12 while walking just one batter. Hopefully, Lugo will be able to capitalize on this moving forward for the ball club.
His curveball was as elite as it’s been in quite some time, and with Drew Smith and Edwin Díaz being great all year, one can hope that Lugo will be able to keep this momentum going and give the Mets an elite 1-2-3 punch in the bullpen.
