What Does Seth Lugo’s Extension Mean for the Royals at the Deadline and Beyond?

The 2025 MLB trade deadline season is up and running. The biggest names aren’t off the board yet, but some trades have now been made, and a few players thought to be available are no longer up for grabs, even one for unexpected reasons (looking at you, Emmanuel Clase).

Less than 36 hours remain until Thursday’s deadline, and the supply and demand outlook remains the same as earlier this month. There continue to be far more buyers than sellers, with so many teams still in contention.

That means that teams on the bubble of contending have a difficult choice to make: Swing some deals and make a run, or leverage this year’s market to build for the future?

The Kansas City Royals are one of those teams right on the bubble. A poor June had them trending as sellers, but a bounceback July has them back to 53-55, 9.5 games behind the AL Central-leading Tigers and four games out of the final AL Wild Card spot.

Making up a four-game deficit is definitely doable for a team that gets hot, and with the Tigers in a surprise freefall, even the division isn’t totally out of reach. Still, being two games under .500 this close to the deadline would lead many teams to pack it in.

If the Royals do decide to go down that path, they hold one of the most coveted cards this deadline season. And he plays at a position that is always in need this time of year.

Starting pitcher Seth Lugo is in the middle of another excellent season for the Royals. Through 19 games, he sits at 7-5 with a 2.95 ERA and a 1.088 WHIP, though he somehow didn’t make his second All-Star Game appearance in a row.

With Lugo owning a player option for 2026 that he likely would have turned down in an effort to secure a new contract, he was considered one of the top rental trade candidates ahead of this year’s deadline. And the Royals could have gotten a lot back for him in a trade.

But that was before Kansas City slammed the door on that possibility.

Instead, in a surprise to many, the Royals went the complete other direction. They actually signed Lugo to a two-year, $46 million contract extension with a club option for 2028, locking up one of the top pitchers in the league for at least the next two years.

For the rest of the league, it means a starting pitcher who could have swung the momentum of a playoff race is off the market. For Kansas City, it means…well, what exactly?

What Seth Lugo’s Contract Extension Means for the Royals

From an extremely near-sighted standpoint, Lugo’s extension means the Royals are hanging on to a top MLB starting pitcher. Of course, there are implications beyond that as well.

The long-term implications should be obvious. The Royals get to continue combining him with starters like Kris Bubic, Cole Ragans, and Noah Cameron to form one of the better rotations in the American League.

The short-term implications, a.k.a. how the team will approach the deadline and the rest of the season, aren’t quite as clear, though they soon will be. Regardless, the team’s direction has to be different than it was even a couple of days ago.

When the Royals were slumping coming into July, they felt like a team that would soft sell at the deadline. Given that they have a young core that’s been recently competitive and not as many super obvious trade candidates as other sellers, a full-blown rebuild wasn’t in the cards.

Even as they went on that run in July, it still felt like selling a couple of assets wouldn’t be a bad idea. While they were looking better, it was hard to imagine that an offense ranked second to last in MLB at 3.58 runs per game could carry a team very far in a playoff run.

That was before the Lugo extension, though. Do you hold on to a player like that if you don’t plan to compete up until the very end this season, or is it really all about the next two years?

Maybe it would help to know that in the month of July, the Royals’ offense has looked quite a bit better. With one game remaining in the month, their runs per game average (4.43) is almost a full run over their season average.

Bobby Witt Jr. has continued to do Bobby Witt Jr. things this month, but he’s not alone in his slugging ways. Veteran Salvador Perez is blisteringly hot right now (.341/.385/.741 in 23 games) while Vinnie Pasquantino, Maikel Garcia, and Tyler Tolbert, among others in smaller samples, are all slugging over .450 this month as well.

That sliver of offensive hope, combined with a pitching staff that has a 3.57 ERA, ranking fourth in MLB, might be exactly what pushed them in this direction. They’re coming off a 2024 playoff appearance, after all. The Royals know what they’re capable of.

But whether it was for short-term or long-term reasons, or both, keeping a player like Lugo in the fold is never a bad idea, even if fellow teams with playoff aspirations really wish they hadn’t.