We're now inside two weeks to go until this year's MLB trade deadline, and the rumor mill is working overtime. For the Chicago Cubs, the goal is simple: Find as much pitching as possible to give arguably the league's best offense the support it needs. And that goal has gotten even more urgent now, with the scorching-hot Milwaukee Brewers breathing down their necks in the NL Central and Kyle Tucker's free agency drawing ever nearer.
But for as desperate as Jed Hoyer is to wheel and deal over the next few days, he needs to tread carefully. Not all pitching is created equal, after all, and you only have so many bullets to fire to make your roster as championship-ready as possible. That's something the Cubs would do well to remember, before they go after a rumored deadline target they live to regret.
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Seth Lugo isn't the rotation solution the Cubs are looking for
At first glance, Kansas City Royals righty Seth Lugo would seem to make all the sense in the world for Chicago. He enters play on Monday with a 2.94 ERA across 107 innings, his fifth straight year with an ERA of 3.60 or below. And as a pending free agent, the fourth-place Royals would figure to make him available as they look to retool ahead of 2026. So it's no wonder that ESPN's Jeff Passan linked Lugo to the Cubs in his latest ranking of the top players available at the deadline.
But if you poke under the hood a little bit, you'll find plenty of reason to doubt that Lugo can be the guy Chicago needs both down the stretch of the regular season and into October. The 35-year-old has never been a strikeout pitcher, instead using a deep reservoir (he can throw up to nine different pitches) to keep hitters off balance and play to contact. So far this year, though, it's hard to avoid to feeling that he's gotten very, very lucky with what happens after the ball gets put in play.
Lugo's BABIP right now sits at .244, which would be his career low as a starter by more than 30 points. His strand rate — the percentage of runners on base that he doesn't allow to score — is a whopping 86.3%, way above the league average of 70-75. Put simply: Lugo's numbers should look much worse than they do based on how he's been pitching, and he's survived mostly because of some very fortunate timing that isn't likely to continue moving forward. (Neither BABIP and strand rate are sticky stats, meaning they tend to regress to the mean over time.)
Don't believe us? Per Baseball Savant, Lugo's expected ERA is 4.71, nearly two full runs higher than his actual mark. That still holds some value given his ability to eat innings, but it's far from the sort of pitcher you'd want to slot into a playoff start behind Shota Imanaga and Matthew Boyd. That, more than anything else, should be Chicago's top priority at the deadline, and while Lugo's relatively cheap cost might appeal, the Cubs should pay extra for someone like Merrill Kelly ahead of such a critical stretch run.