Breakout pitchers in fantasy baseball are often identified early in their careers, when skills start to emerge, even when they might not translate immediately to results. Savvy fantasy baseball managers identify skills growth and improvement before the rest of their fantasy baseball league catches up. But what about when a pitcher is 36 years old and has been in the league for 11 years? Through five starts in 2026, Seth Lugo is having his best year as a starting pitcher ever. Can it last?
On Monday night, Seth Lugo shut down the Baltimore Orioles for just one hit and no runs with seven strikeouts over seven innings. He got a no-decision because of a blown save in the ninth, but it was his fifth straight start with at least five innings pitched and no more than two earned runs.
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Seth Lugo is an Ace at Age 36
Lugo is entering his age-36 season, a time when a lot of pitchers are way past their prime. But right now, Lugo is a fixture in the Royals’ rotation. Lugo is only in his fifth full season as a starter and has spent much of his career in the bullpen. Despite being our 81st-ranked pitcher coming into the season, Lugo could easily finish in the top 25 pitchers this year.
Let’s dive deeper into why Lugo is a must-roster right now in fantasy baseball.
Seth Lugo’s First Five Starts Have Been Amazing
The most immediate reason to believe in Lugo’s early success is what he has already shown in his first five starts of the 2026 season. In those five starts, he has already faced the Braves, Tigers, Orioles, and Brewers, so it’s not like he has faced the Nationals five times or something.
He has attacked the zone more, limited hard contact (more on that below), and looked fully in control against lineups featuring elite hitters. That start looks even more impressive now that the Royals are struggling to score runs and need a lockdown pitcher in addition to Cole Ragans.
Against the Orioles on Monday night, he was perhaps the best he has been all season. He had seven strikeouts (a season-high), and held the Baltimore lineup scoreless for seven innings and only allowed five total base-runners. Through two starts, that’s four earned runs, and only 30 men allowed on base in 29.1 innings.
It is quite the turnaround for a pitcher with a 65-48 career record and a 3.44 ERA for his career. What is behind the success so far? Let’s look more at his pitching profile.
Lugo’s Pitch Mix is Working Wonders
Seth Lugo is far from a one-dimensional or one-pitch pitcher. He brings a deep arsenal, including a good fastball, curveball, sinker, slider, and changeup. The sinker and curveball have proven to be legitimate out pitches at the major league level. In 2025, Lugo started to move back into using his fastball more after emphasizing breaking pitches more in recent years.
He has also added a cutter over the last two years, and its usage is up to 12.4% this season. This season, his sinker sits at just under 92 miles per hour. The changeup is now almost at 87 miles per hour, and both pitches are generating a solid whiff rate. But the fastball and sinker combo remains his bread and butter. He is throwing those two pitches 40% of the time through five starts, and even though he doesn’t ever have elite strikeout rates (under eight strikeouts per nine innings), he hasn’t allowed a home run in almost 30 innings.
Limiting Hard Contact Covers Many Mistakes
So if a pitcher like Lugo doesn’t have high strikeout stuff, what can he do on a start where the swing and miss isn’t working for him? He can rely on his devastating sinker and changeup to induce soft contact all day long. In the 2026 season, that has become perhaps the most dominant part of his game.
Lugo has a 15% soft-contact rate in his career, but this year, Lugo has improved that tohis 9.2% in 2026. So far in 2026, his hard-hit rate is down to a very low 27%. That’s almost 10 percentage points lower than the same rate in 2025, and six points lower than his career average.
In his Monday start, Lugo combined for 13 strikeouts and groundballs of his 21 outs. When batters can’t even get the ball in the air, and can’t make any hard contact on the ball when they do, there is very little chance they are going to put together enough barrels and hard hits to do much damage.
Lugo Has Been Great, but Projection Sytems are Cautious
Add up all the attributes from above, and we have an ace to start the season. In fact, there are just five pitchers in the early part of 2026 who have an ERA under 1.50 and a WHIP under 1.00:
Pitchers with a Whip Below 1.00, ERA Below 1.50
- Jose Soriano
- Michael Wacha
- Parker Messick
- Seth Lugo
- Bryce Elder
This is an impressive list to be on, but you’ll notice it’s not filled with names like Skubal, Skenes, or Crochet. Christopher Sanchez and Yoshinobu Yamamoto are close, but there is a lot of variance this early in the season.
Projection systems are somewhat mixed on Lugo for the rest of the season. Multiple models for 2026 put Lugo with an ERA in the low-to-mid 4.00s with a little bit less than a strikeout per inning across a full-season workload. That might not immediately strike you as “ace” material, but for fantasy purposes, that level of production, especially for what he cost you at drafts or on the waiver wire, can still be productive.
Most projection systems (like the ones accounting heavily for xERA and FIP), are saying he has been lucky by not allowing a home run this season. That certainly may be true, but his .277 BABIP isn’t too far off the league average, and the soft contact explains why he keeps the ball in the park.
Should we expect an ERA and WHIP this low all season? Certainly not. But it’s clear Lugo is going to have tremendous value in fantasy baseball this season. Through five starts, it’s all working for him. I’m here to tell you to go and grab Seth Lugo if he is available in your league right now. After his start on Monday night, the price is about to go way up on the 36-year-old.
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