Orioles Sign NPB Legend Tomoyuki Sugano To One-Year Pact
My favorite one-year deal of the winter so far asks an interesting question: What does 80-grade command look like without overpowering stuff?
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Hi, I’m Ben Clemens. You might know me from such articles as “C’mon, Orioles, Do Something”, “Why Are the Orioles’ Playoff Odds So Low?”, and “Wait, FanGraphs Is Too Low on the Orioles Again?!”. In my spare time, I also write about the rest of the league, but today I’m focusing on Baltimore yet again given their latest signing: The O’s and right-hander Tomoyuki Sugano have agreed to a one-year, $13 million contract.
Sugano has been one of the best pitchers in NPB for more than a decade. The 35-year-old won the Central League MVP in 2014, and he’s added two more MVP awards since then. He also won two Sawamura Awards – think the Cy Young, only for the entire league and with minimum criteria – neither in any of his three MVP seasons. In other words, he’s been racking up hardware like no one else for his entire career.
Reading a scouting report on Sugano is like chicken soup for my command-obsessed soul. If pitching was entirely about hitting a tiny target, Sugano might be the best pitcher in the world. Saying that he has the ball on a string would be offensive to Sugano; I can’t control a yo-yo as well as he can spot his five-pitch arsenal. He walked 16 of the 608 batters he faced last year, a 2.6% rate that would make George Kirby jealous.
It’s not just walk avoidance that sets Sugano apart from the crowd, though. He works the corners and tunnels his pitches off of each other to great effect. He can add or subtract from everything he throws, so his five-pitch mix can feel even deeper when a hitter is trying to figure out what’s coming next. He might not inspire the physical discomfort batters experience when facing triple-digit heat that could come right at their ribcage if the pitcher misses his location, but facing Sugano is like solving a Saturday crossword puzzle, if crossword puzzles threw splitters.
A bit more about that pitch mix. Sugano throws two fastballs, neither of which inspires much confidence. His four-seamer sits 92-93 mph on a good day, with a forgettable movement profile. He mixes in a sinker that he adores when behind in the count, and that does what you’d expect: keep the ball on the ground and homers to a minimum. Both of those are just show-me pitches, though. The real juice is in his bendy pitches.
As is the case for many NPB pitchers, Sugano has a wipeout splitter he uses most frequently with two strikes. He also throws two breaking balls – variously reported as a cutter/slider and a slider/curveball – which act as multi-purpose offerings, allowing him to attack the corners early in counts and hunt whiffs later on. Of those three, only the splitter stands out to me as a plus pitch independent of his impeccable command. That’s a theme here: Everything Sugano does would look iffy if he weren’t dotting the corners, only he is.
At his peak, Sugano’s stuff hummed, which turned his command from an equalizer into an unfair advantage. Now, though, he’s squarely into his latter-year-Greinke phase. He didn’t miss many bats in 2024, even as he put up a 1.67 ERA and won his third MVP. That ERA outstripped his peripherals; he ran a below-average strikeout rate and lived on a combination of soft contact and a total absence of walks. In addition, that ERA isn’t quite as sterling as it sounds. NPB is in the midst of a huge decline in offense. In the Central League, where Sugano pitched, teams averaged 3.22 runs per game in 2024, and hit homers at less than half the rate of the majors. You might be able to get by with a tame fastball in that context, but that kind of pitching profile doesn’t typically play well in the power-happy AL East. But then again, Sugano’s command is far from usual.
So how will Sugano’s outlier skills look in the majors? I have no idea! Here’s what ZiPS thinks about his range of outcomes, though:
| Percentile | ERA+ | ERA | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|
| 95% | 132 | 3.01 | 3.5 |
| 90% | 124 | 3.21 | 3.1 |
| 80% | 113 | 3.53 | 2.5 |
| 70% | 107 | 3.73 | 2.2 |
| 60% | 102 | 3.90 | 2.0 |
| 50% | 100 | 3.99 | 1.8 |
| 40% | 96 | 4.14 | 1.6 |
| 30% | 91 | 4.38 | 1.2 |
| 20% | 87 | 4.57 | 0.9 |
| 10% | 82 | 4.86 | 0.5 |
| 5% | 78 | 5.07 | 0.3 |
If I were the Orioles, I’d be extremely interested in obtaining a pitcher like Sugano on this kind of deal. There’s a decent chance that he ends up as nothing more than an innings-eater, a late-career version of former Yomiuri Giants teammate Miles Mikolas. You wouldn’t want to start that version of Sugano in the playoffs, but he’d be a capable fifth starter.
Even that outcome isn’t exactly a disaster for Baltimore. They have some interesting top-of-rotation arms, but their depth is lacking. They’re counting on a lot of guys – Trevor Rogers, Dean Kremer, Grayson Rodriguez – with durability questions. Zach Eflin threw 165.1 innings this season, and Albert Suarez is a nice swingman, but they’ll need a ton of rotation help. Last year, even with Corbin Burnes leading the staff, Cade Povich and Cole Irvin made 16 starts apiece. Even a diminished version of Sugano could replace those innings comfortably.
The upside case? This guy just tore the second-best baseball league in the world to shreds. He appeared to be on the decline in 2022 and 2023, but he wouldn’t be the first ace pitcher to stage a career renaissance after a few ugly years, and even his ugly years weren’t complete disasters. If he spins a sub-3.00 ERA season out of splitters, deception, and just a tiny bit of life on his fastball, would you truly be floored?
For one year and $13 million, I love the risk/reward here. That’s Alex Cobb money, less than it cost for one year of Frankie Montas, who just got a two-year deal. Maybe Sugano’s fastball will get tattooed. Maybe command just won’t cut it when he can’t miss bats. But he wouldn’t be the first finesse-based pitcher to succeed in the majors, and his track record suggests that he’s one of the best finesse pitchers in the world.
As is customary for one of my articles about the Orioles, I still don’t think they’ve done enough. We’re halfway through Adley Rutschman’s six years of discounted team control, and the O’s haven’t won a playoff game yet. Their farm system is still ridiculous. Their payroll is comfortably in the bottom half of the majors. Their rotation could use a Burnes replacement, whether someone who is signed in free agency or acquired in trade. Heck, they could at least throw some money at Rutschman or Gunnar Henderson (or Jordan Westburg, or Colton Cowser, or…) for an extension.
But that’s not today’s business. Today’s business is Sugano, and again, I love the deal. I hope he’s throwing darts at the low-and-outside corner as a playoff starter at the end of next season – and even if he isn’t, I think the Orioles were wise to take a risk on him.
