In December, the Padres signed right-hander Seth Lugo to a one-year deal that includes a player option for 2024. The 33-year-old Louisiana native was a walk-on at Centenary College — nickname: Gentlemen — before he was selected by the New York Mets in the 34th round of the 2011 draft. Lugo played seven seasons with the Mets, first as a starter before being used exclusively out of the bullpen. He signed with the Padres for a chance to make the rotation and has been a key addition, with 10 quality starts among the 16 he has made. In high school, Lugo played several sports and was voted “Most Sarcastic” by his classmates.
Union-Tribune: Your full name is Jacob Seth Lugo. Why do you go by Seth?
Lugo: If I correctly, my mom wanted me to be named Seth. My dad wanted me to be named Jacob after his grandpa. My great grandpa’s name was Jacob Daniel. But they didn’t want to call me Jacob.
U-T: So they got Jacob in there but didn’t need to hear it every day. You grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana. What stands out about childhood in Louisiana?
Lugo: Mostly it’s spending all my weekends at the lake growing up, on my uncle’s boat. My dad had a little fishing boat we’d take out sometimes. Swimming, tubing, getting on docks, fishing. Just all day at the lake.
U-T: You attended Centenary College in Shreveport. The Centenary Gentlemen. When did you know you were good, that you could have a future in baseball?
Lugo: It was my sophomore year and we were doing an intrasquad. We just got a new pitching coach and he kind of taught me how to tap into a little more velocity, use my body more efficiently. We were doing a scrimmage and I knew I was throwing harder than I’ve ever thrown. I went and asked the pitchers on the gun, like as soon as I got done, I said, ‘How hard was I throwing?’ I was hoping for 90 (mph). He said, ‘You hit 94 once.’ And I I was talking to my buddy Dan and I knew right then, I was like, ‘I got a shot now. I got a shot.’ It was that exact day. I very vividly.
U-T: That was 2010, your sophomore year. You were eligible for the draft the following year. Did you anticipate being drafted?
Lugo: I’d been told by a couple teams, they told me like 14th to 17th rounds. So the first two days I watched. I was up to the 30th round by the second day and I wasn’t drafted so I was pretty bummed out. The last day, I didn’t watch. I kept myself busy with other stuff. I thought that was it, I wasn’t getting drafted and I was gonna have to figure out what I was going to do next. I was actually doing a kids’ camp at Centenary and the coach that I played for, he was there at the time. He called me, he said, ‘Lugo, come out here.’ I ran up to his office and he said, ‘You’re about to get drafted. I just got a text message, you’re about to get drafted right now. There it is. There’s your name.’
U-T: What was your backup plan?
Lugo: I had free transfers because the school was in a transition to drop Division III, so I had transfers to other schools available. I also had a pretty good degree going, so I was in between staying at that school because it was a good school to get that degree from, or transfer to another school that didn’t have my degree and try baseball. I wasn’t sure. But I had a couple options.
U-T: What was your degree?
Lugo: Geology.
U-T: Isn’t that like rocks and stuff?
Lugo: (Nods). That’s how you get into the oil business.
U-T: Ahh, thinking like a businessman right there. Did you get far?
Lugo: I finished all the geology parts. There’s a couple calculus and chemistry and physics (classes) that I still needed to do. I saved the hardest ones for last in case I got drafted. But I did finish all the geology parts.
U-T: Rocks are cool. When you drive around, can you distinguish between different rocks?
Lugo: Yeah, I can. I forgot a lot of the technical names for a lot of them. But I know the basics, and I can tell some rock formations especially when you drive through the mountains and kind of how the layers are and stuff like that.
U-T: Love it. A year after you get drafted, you have spinal surgery to repair a vertebra that had slipped when you were deadlifting in college. Spinal surgery! Can you give us the backstory?
Lugo: I was 22. The initial injury was in college. I played through it my last season, and I played the first year of pro ball. Then I come to spring training and I kind of blew it out on long toss and throwing. We got the MRIs and they said, ‘Look, you can try to play through it. It’s gonna be really hard. It’s gonna take a lot. And you’re probably going to deal with it a long time. We recommend you have the surgery.’ So I called my pitching coach from college that had pro ball experience, like ‘Dude, what do I do? I’ve got no idea what to do.’ He said, ‘Do whatever they tell you to do. Just trust your trainers because they’re looking out for you in your career. So if you want to keep playing, do whatever they say.’ So it’s like, let’s do the surgery. And then I swear, I was in the hospital and I thought the doctor was trying to talk me out of it.
U-T: Because the doctor is telling you that you might never play again, right?
Lugo: The doctor, I he said, ‘You sure you don’t have your degree you can fall back on, maybe you can get into ing? Are there any other options before you have the surgery?’ I was like, ‘Man, you’re telling me I shouldn’t have this?’ But I was already up in New York by myself so I was like, well, let’s just do it. And then the fun part was after that.
U-T: Yes, recovery from spinal fusion surgery seems like it would be a blast. You ended up at your mom’s house on a mattress on the living room floor, correct?
Lugo: I was in the hospital for a little over a week after surgery, in New York by myself. Then I went to a hotel and they would have a nurse come by and check on me a couple times a day for a week. So I was just kind of stuck up there. And then the flight home was kind of miserable. They told me not to sit still for more than about 30 minutes. I had a middle seat. I couldn’t even get someone to put me in the aisle. So the flight back was pretty miserable, but I was on pain pills and stuff so I don’t it 100 percent. But I being really uncomfortable. Then they told me bedrest for six months, just stay as still as you can for six months. I think I lasted about three months. The next three months, I was kind of moving around, doing my own thing. I was still not bending over or twisting or picking things up but I had to get out of the house. I had to get on my feet.
U-T: Did that time get really dark. mentally?
Lugo: I didn’t know how the business side or anything works. But if I have this major surgery that has to be $100,000 at least, then in my mind, the team just invested in me, so I’ve got a real shot. So I was in a pretty good state of mind. I had buddies over at my house hanging out with me. I made the best of it. … That’s when I got into ‘Game of Thrones.’ … I was still getting a little bit of money from my minor league salary — not a lot, but a couple hundred bucks a month — so I bought a little guitar and I laid in bed playing guitar and watching TV and playing video games.
U-T: This is an awesome visual. On a mattress on the living room floor, watching ‘Game of Thrones’ and playing the guitar. Do you still feel the effects of the injury and surgery?
Lugo: The biggest thing before the surgery was that I had a lot of sciatic nerve damage on my right leg. For years, my muscles in my right leg were noticeably smaller and I had excess skin I could, like, pull on. And still it’s not quite as strong as my left leg. But it took six or seven years before I stopped noticing the weakness in my right leg. My mechanics did change a little bit because of that, but you know, a lot of single leg isometric stuff to try to strengthen it, which I still do now. I don’t think it’ll ever really catch up, but it’s good enough.
U-T: You ended up playing seven seasons with the Mets. For a kid from Louisiana, what was it like going to New York? It’s so different there in of the spotlight and media presence, not to mention the city.
Lugo: Absolutely. I didn’t know anything about the Mets when I got drafted. I’d never been to New York. … I in 2016, my rookie year, I think it was just after I got into the rotation that the (Mets’ public relations) guy came up to me and asked me if I wanted to go on, I don’t exactly who, but it was one of them big time primetime TV shows at 7 o’clock, and it was live. I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m going on live TV. There’s no way.’ They were like, ‘We’ll give you a watch and it’ll be cool. We’ll get you a limo.’ I was like no, I am not doing that.
U-T: You were a starter with the Mets, then a reliever. Why were you adamant about starting again?
Lugo: For me, there’s a certain way I look at baseball and how it’s played and how I think it should be played and pitched. That’s what I try to do when I’m out there. And as a reliever, I would have the entire scouting report for the entire team. I’m ready to face all of them multiple times. But then I face three hitters and five minutes later, my day is done. And I go back and watch and look, it’s cool, I’m on TV playing baseball, but that’s 5 minutes and it’s over. So that wasn’t enough for me. I want to be out there longer. I want to use all my pitches. I want to play the game, not just go out there and throw a couple of my best fastballs and my best couple curveballs and watch everybody else play. … I want to play the whole game; where guys are hitting the ball, the hitters’ approaches, how the umpires are calling the game, managerial moves, just how the whole thing is unfolding. I pay attention to all of it. So just coming in to be a reliever for one inning, that’s not enough for me.
U-T: Did you ever lose faith that you might start again? Because sometimes once you get pegged as something, it’s hard to go back.
Lugo: In the back of my mind, I would have that sense a little bit, but I convinced myself not to think like that. Honestly, I didn’t think I would get to start again. I didn’t. But I was never gonna lose that thought. Because the last thing you want to happen is you do turn around to start, but you already lost the drive for it. So you can hold on to the drive even if you don’t get it but that’s what drove me to be a better reliever, a better baseball player in general. If I give up (the thought of starting), then I give up on the sport.
U-T: You were part of a combined no-hitter with the Mets. This is a controversial topic among some baseball folks. Is a combined no-hitter a real no-hitter?
Lugo: Sure. Yeah. I mean before I threw one, I’d say no. But now that I have, yeah. I got a ball with my name on it in the Hall of Fame. That’s a no-hitter.
U-T: What was it like coming to a new team after being with the same organization your entire career?
Lugo: It was kind of scary.
U-T: Thanks for being honest about that.
Lugo: It was, sure. I feel like in spring training I was still kind of in my shell a little bit. You know, just feeling things out. But these are great guys, so they make it really easy. I’ve been around long enough to know that you’re not always fortunate to be on a team with such great guys.
U-T: You and your wife Amanda have two sons, James, 3, and Myles, 1. Your first-born, James, had open-heart surgery when he was only 21 months to correct a heart murmur. How difficult was that to go through?
Lugo: I my wife took him to a checkup and they said they found a heart murmur. They recommended we see a heart specialist and he said, ‘You gotta have open heart surgery. You gotta get it sewn up.’ So I’m just thinking, OK, well at least they know what they’re talking about. … It didn’t really hit me until they put him under. That was the longest two hours of my life. That wasn’t fun.
U-T: I bet. And thankfully, he’s fine now. Besides running around after your kids, do you have any hobbies?
Lugo: Oh yeah. Big time disc golfer. That’s my No. 1. Spend a lot of time on the golf course too, so I golf. I love to fish. Fishing has always been my thing. I grew up fishing all the time. Basically, anything. I played in a pool league for a number of years. Pretty competitive in bowling so I can handle myself on the lanes.
U-T: I bet you’re fun at parties.
Lugo: Oh yeah. If we’re at a party, you find the gaming section and that’s where I’m at. I’m playing all the games and I’m very competitive. I don’t sit down much. … My wife and friends, they hate playing board games with me because I know the rules. You’re not going to stump me on a rule. If I say something, this is how it goes, it’s because I know the rules. It causes some fights from time to time but you know, everyone always teams up against me so I’m used to it. But I get very serious. Monopoly is a sore subject. I’m not selling my properties. I’ll need two of yours for one of mine.
U-T: Does anyone else in the clubhouse play disc golf? I feel like that’s a sport that’s shown on ESPN in the early morning hours, like before dawn.
Lugo: Josh (Hader) says his family plays back in Delaware and he’s played a few times. I took (Brent) Honeywell out with me in Toronto. We got a round in in Toronto. I don’t think anybody else knows what it is.
U-T: You should have done this interview on video, too. Who knew you had such a great personality, Seth?
Lugo: I’m just too shy. I have an older sister and she picked on me a lot growing up and she liked to talk, so I just learned don’t say anything, let other people do the talking. I’ll just listen and that later. … Basically everyone in my family will talk your head off except for, I guess, the men in my family. We realized real quick to just let all the women do the talking and we’ll just listen and try not to forget things.
Heilbrunn is a freelancer.
