Road to October: The Royals’ Path, Powered by Bossier’s Seth Lugo

The Kansas City Royals were one of the biggest surprises of the 2024 baseball season. They won nearly 30 more games than they did in 2023 and ended up beating the Baltimore Orioles in the Wild Card round. One of the key factors to their success in 2024 was their pitching - namely Bossier City's own Seth Lugo, who had a career year and finished second in the AL Cy Young race.

If the Royals have any chance of repeating, Lugo is going to have to have a repeat performance. So that leads us to the biggest question of the 2025 off-season: Can he do it?

Can Bossier's Seth Lugo Have Another Cy Young Type Season?

2024 was a career year for the former Parkway Panther and Centenary Gent. He was an All-Star for the first time in his career, he finished 2nd in the Cy Young, he won a Gold Glove, and set several career highs. His performance was so good, he actually got MVP votes - finishing 15th.

Those type of years don't come around very often. But, for the Royals to make another run, he's going to have to come pretty darn close. Bobby Witt Jr is a superstar. Salvador Perez is an aging leader. But, their biggest strength is run prevention. Which is where Lugo comes in. He had an ERA of 3.00 and pitched 206.2 innings in 2024. Which means he kept games close and kept the pressure off the Royals bullpen.

The AL Central is a tough division with the Guardians, Royals, Twins and Tigers all potentially playoff contenders. Pitching in this division is going to be of the utmost importance. If Seth Lugo, Cole Ragans and the rest of the staff can perform, the Royals have a pretty good chance of winning 85+ games and reaching the post season. If the pitching falters, it could be a long season in Kansas City.

Seth Lugo's Projections for the 2025 Season

During spring training, Seth has been working hard to improve on last season. As he says in the video, he's changed some pitch grips and is adding some new pitches to his repertoire. For none baseball fanatics, in simple terms, it means he's working to build on his performance last year.

According to the pre-season projections from Baseball Reference, Seth Lugo is expected to regress this season. Which isn't wholly unexpected. Very few 35 year olds can string together multiple Cy Young type years together. However, I think their projections are a little off. They're only projecting him to be 11-8 with a 3.43 ERA over 168 innings in 2025. And while I think it's safe to assume his ERA will be slightly higher and his innings slightly less, the 11-8 is what bothers me most.

A 3.43 ERA keeps the Royals in games. With Bobby Witt, Sal Perez and Pasqantino, there's a little firepower to the offense. Defensively, they're a really good team. So, I don't think it's ridiculous to expect Seth to win 15-16 games again in 2025, even if the rest of the other numbers are a little down.

However, all the team projection models are predicting that the Royals will miss the playoffs in 2025. They didn't get any respect last year and they're sure not getting any this year either. So, will they surprise the world again in 2025? Time will tell.

Regardless, I'll be rooting for Seth to have another fantastic year in 2025. And, I know that he'll make all his fans in Bossier and Shreveport proud.