2024 Season in Review: Lucas Erceg

Great stuff, great performance

Kansas City Royals fans, myself included, were blown away by the skill and dominance of the 2014 and 2015 Royals bullpen. The centerpiece of that bullpen was Wade Davis, who made the transition from mediocre starting pitcher to, somehow, the best relief pitcher on the planet. Royals fans, myself included, are therefore continually on the lookout for the next Davis.

Earlier in the year, I pointed out that James McArthur was looking quite like the Wade of yore. After I wrote the piece about McArthur, he of course put up a 5.52 ERA through the rest of the year. Whoops.

There are two lessons from this Royals season, I think. One is that it is folly for any reliever to approach the highs of Davis, so we should stop wishcasting (easier said than done). But two, thanks to the appearance and brilliance of Luke Erceg, it is still definitely possible for a reliever to come out of nowhere and be good for a team.

Erceg’s story is a fascinating one. Drafted as a third baseman by the Milwaukee Brewers from Menlo College as the 46th overall selection in 2016, Erceg struggled with the bat once he hit the upper levels of the minors. And when the pandemic hit in 2020, his struggle with the bottle deepened, and his alcoholism nearly wrecked his life. But Erceg became sober that June and returned to professional baseball in 2021 as a pitcher in his age-26 season.

Though he struggled initially, he got a chance to contribute to the train wreck 112-loss Oakland Athletics in 2023, where he showed serious strikeout stuff albeit with some command issues. This season, he broke out, finally grasping command of the strike zone and turning into the setup man for Mason Miller. The Royals acquired Erceg at the end of July.

When Royals Review wrote about the Erceg trade, the Royals had also acquired Paul DeJong from the White Sox. Most of the energy in the comment section was confusion directed towards the DeJong trade. Generally, people liked the Erceg trade but thought the Royals might have given up a little too much to acquire him.

So, how’d it go in the two months since the Royals acquired him?

Oh, that’s right, that’s Erceg demolishing Heston Kjerstad (regular season 116 wRC+) and Gunnar Henderson (regular season 155 wRC+) with 91-MPH changeups to close out the Wild Card series and send the Royals to the ALDS.

Erceg only pitched 23 regular season games for the Royals, but he was incredibly dominant. With an ERA of 2.88 and and FIP of 1.17, Erceg was in fact unlucky. Despite that, he was even better than he was in Oakland, leading the team with a 28.9% K-BB rate. He struck out 32% of all batters. It was nuts.

In the playoffs, Erceg ran into the same problem the rest of the Royals did, which was the Yankees drawing walks like it was going out of style. Still, a 3.00 ERA in 6 innings of work is nothing to sneeze at, especially considering the razor-thin margins he had in Baltimore the previous series.

While Erceg turns 30 in May, there are way fewer innings on his arm than there are for most 30-year-olds. Remember that this is only Erceg’s fourth full season as a pitcher. If he continues on his current trajectory, whoooo boy. Maybe, just maybe, a year of Davis-esque performance might be in reach.