Trade to Royals just one big life event in day filled with them for new KC pitcher

New Royals relief pitcher Lucas Erceg and his wife, Emma, closed on a house Tuesday morning, then learned he had been traded.

Fortunately for the Ercegs, he was acquired by the Royals, whose spring-training facility is in Surprise, Arizona, not far from the couple’s new home.

So Erceg was thinking about a new house and club when he arrived at the Royals’ team hotel in Chicago at 2 a.m. Wednesday.

It was a whirlwind for Erceg, so he was happy to see a familiar face on the team bus taking the trip to Guaranteed Rate Field for Wednesday’s game: Royals relief pitcher Sam Long.

The two were teammates with the Oakland A’s a year ago and they knew of each other from playing travel baseball in northern California.

“He welcomed me with open arms,” Erceg said. “Really cool, man. Really cool. He’s a great guy and we get along great.”

Erceg said his other new teammates embraced him as well, but his ties with Long go back to when they were teenagers.

“We grew up playing against each other, we knew of each other as we were going through high school and college and got a chance to finally played together last year,” Long said. “Just hit it off immediately, just kind of clicked

“Just a solid dude overall. We have a lot in common being from the same area, northern California guys. He’s gonna fit in great down here.”

Erceg filled in routinely for travel ball teams as a kid, and was sort of a ringer, Long noted.

“He would come in and help them win,” Long said. “Like, every time I’d see Erceg was filling in on this team, of course, they went and won the tournament. That’s just who he’s been his whole life. A heck of a ballplayer overall. He can do a lot of good things on the ballfield.”

Former hitter

At that time, Erceg was known more as a hitter. He was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in 2016 as a third baseman.

He’s undergone some big changes since then.

Erceg switched to pitching in 2021 as he hit a wall as a batter. That came one year after he gave up drinking. An MLB.com story noted he had 6/10/20 embroidered on his glove to mark the “first date of Erceg’s sobriety.”

Erceg has also spoken about dealing with depression.

Rather than shy away from talking about those chapters in his life, Erceg said they have helped him.

“It means everything,” Erceg said. “I always like to talk about just having a little bit of perspective and not fully knowing what tomorrow is gonna bring, but I know if I bring a positive mindset to the field every day or to dinner every day or whatever it is, if you have a positive mindset, good things are gonna happen. You’re gonna enjoy it.”

The Royals see a bright future for Erceg, partly because he became a pitcher much later than most. They gave up three players to acquire him, but he’ll be under team control for the rest of this decade.

Erceg, who has a 3.68 ERA, throws an electric four-seam fastball. He’s averaged 98.5 mph with the pitch, which ranks as the eighth-fastest in the majors, the team noted.

The Royals’ faith in trading away a haul of players means a lot to Erceg, who believes he still has room for improvement.

“It’s kind of a testament to all the hard work that we do and kind of never giving up and always having that perspective of just trying to get better every day,” Erceg said. “But like I said, I don’t know what my role is. It doesn’t really matter to me. I want to go out there and throw zeros and compete with the boys.”