Cubs trade target: Seth Lugo

Denny Medley - USA Today Sports

Dustin Riese - Senior Writer - 5 hours ago

It's amazing how fast things can go from good to bad during a baseball season. Ten days ago, the Cubs were riding high with their most significant division lead of the season, while also pushing their record to its highest watermark above .500. Since then, the Cubs have seen their division lead dwindle by four games, as they are facing their first real adversity this season.

A significant reason for their recent struggles stems from a starting staff that not only has started to regress, but has done so in such a massive way that they have become a liability on the mound. Getting Shota Imanaga back this week is going to be an enormous lift, but this team won't survive much longer when the rest of their staff is serving up batting practice, let alone failing to get through five innings.

If this team wants to get out of its current funk, things need to change in a hurry, and one of those changes needs to happen from the starting pitching front, as they require starting pitching upgrades. Sandy Alcantara and Edward Cabrera are the two names generating the most steam, but the Cubs are being linked to several new names as the struggles mount.

The newest name on that list is Kansas City right-hander Seth Lugo, who could become a realistic target for the Cubs. When ESPN dropped their list of the top-50 trade candidates, Lugo landed near the middle of the list at No. 28, but ESPN's Jeff Passan has the Cubs as the best fit for him. This is a man who has struggled for most of his career, but it has been over the past four years that he has turned things around and become a very reliable middle-of-the-rotation arm.

I know what everyone is thinking. Why add another middle of the rotation arm when this team desperately needs an Ace. While that may be true, but Lugo is a massive upgrade to what Colin Rea and Ben Brown have been providing and would fit in nicely between Imanaga and Jameson Taillon within the Cubs rotation.

Unlike a lot of the names mentioned in the trade candidates, Lugo is not a hard thrower and tends to sit around 93-94 MPH with his heater. While his strikeout rate is up from where it was earlier in his career, he doesn't miss as many bats as you'd like, which could be an issue at Wrigley Field if the wind continues to blow out.

On the other hand, if the wind starts to blow in again, Lugo would be the perfect fit for this rotation, as he is one of those pitchers who can trust the defense behind him to make plays. While his fastball may not be what you consider a high-velocity heater, the one thing he has going for him is that he has eight different pitches to choose from, which allows him to offset a hitter's timing.

Similar to Javier Assad, who has six different pitches, Lugo's best offering is his slider, as he has used that just as much as his heater at times. Given that he has to rely on several pitches and not just one power fastball, Lugo avoids hard contact and keeps the ball on the ground. He throws strikes and doesn’t issue many walks. In other words, he’s a pitcher, not a thrower.

That is the complete opposite of what a pitcher looks like nowadays, but when you look at the success he has had over the past few seasons, the results speak for themselves. A reliever for most of his career, it was the Padres who moved him to the rotation in 2023, which some say changed the entire outlook of his career.

Although it was only a one-year span with the Padres, Lugo pitched so well in the rotation that season that the Royals went out and spent $30 million on him the following offseason to lock him up for two seasons. Since then, Lugo has not only been fantastic, but one of the more underrated pitchers in the game as he finished second in American League Cy Young Award balloting, going 16-9 with an ERA of 3.00 last season.

He did that while throwing nearly 207 innings at the age of 33, so the word workhorse certainly comes to mind. This season has been no different for the right-hander as he currently has a 2.93 ERA. Lugo may not have been the name most Cubs fans were hoping for, but given the team's current situation and his impressive performance, he is certainly a name worth following over the next few weeks.