Sugano stays true to 'mentality' of pitching deep in 7-inning start

WASHINGTON -- Less than one month into his MLB career, Tomoyuki Sugano has already developed a reputation inside the Orioles’ clubhouse of what to expect each time the 35-year-old Japanese right-hander steps onto the mound.

“He’s awesome,” infielder Jackson Holliday said. “Every time he goes out there, we know we’re going to get a quality start, he’s going to throw a bunch of strikes and get late into the game.”

Baltimore has struggled. The club’s starting rotation has been banged up and underperformed. But Sugano -- a rookie by MLB standards but one of the most decorated pitchers in Nippon Professional Baseball history -- has been more than carrying his weight.

Sugano turned in another strong seven-inning outing during the Orioles’ 4-3 loss to the Nationals at Nationals Park on Wednesday night. Although a late O’s comeback attempt was unsuccessful, Sugano kept the team in it and made sure it was a winnable game.

Through 23 games, Sugano is the only Baltimore starter to go deeper than six innings -- and he’s done it twice, as he also tossed seven impressive frames in his previous start against Cleveland last Thursday.

“I always have this mentality of going deep every time I pitch,” Sugano said via interpreter Yuto Sakurai.

Wednesday could have easily turned into a shorter night for Sugano, who gave up a pair of first-inning homers. James Wood led off the bottom of the first with a home run, then Josh Bell hit a two-run blast later in the frame.

However, Washington never scored again vs. Sugano, who retired nine consecutive batters following Bell’s homer. Sugano settled in and set down 18 of the final 21 hitters he faced, a stretch including a 1-2-3 seventh.

Sugano used all six of his pitches fairly evenly during the 94-pitch outing, relying most on the splitter (29 times) but incorporating each of the sweeper (17), cutter (16), sinker (11), four-seam fastball (11) and curveball (10) at a decent rate. He induced only four whiffs among 42 swings, but the Nationals recorded only seven hard-hit balls (exit velocity of 95-plus mph, per Statcast) against him.

“We were trying to get the ball up,” Washington manager Dave Martinez said. “Sugano, he settled down pretty good. His split was good, his offspeed was good, his cutter was better toward the latter part of the game.”

“He hung that one to Bell in the first, but I thought he mixed really well after that,” O’s manager Brandon Hyde noted. “Didn't show any sign that he was getting tired. Just knows how to pitch. Really did a great job mixing speeds and keeping them off-balance for seven innings.”

After issuing five walks in 14 innings over his first three starts, Sugano hasn’t had any in either of his past two outings. His pinpoint command is a big reason why he was a two-time Sawamura Award winner, a three-time Central League MVP and an eight-time All-Star during his 12-year run with the Yomiuri Giants.

The only other Orioles pitcher to record back-to-back starts of seven-plus innings featuring no walks since the start of 2020 is Corbin Burnes, who did so June 22 and 27 last season.

“I made sure I just kept going [after the first]. I pounded the zone,” Sugano said. “That was what I was thinking.”

As Sugano kept putting up zeroes, Baltimore clawed back into the game. Adley Rutschman knocked an RBI single in the third, Tyler O’Neill had a sacrifice fly in the seventh and Ramón Urías tied the game at 3 with a sac fly in the eighth.

But the Nats quickly took a 4-3 lead in the bottom of the eighth on Luis García Jr.’s sac fly, then Kyle Finnegan stranded a pair of O’s baserunners in the ninth by getting Heston Kjerstad to pop out to end the contest.

A night after recording only one hit, the Orioles registered 10. However, they went 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position and left 12 men on base.

It was still encouraging for Baltimore to look less flat than it did in its previous two games -- a 24-2 loss to Cincinnati on Sunday and a 7-0 defeat at Washington on Tuesday -- as it tries to build some positive momentum. If the rest of the rotation can emulate Sugano and the O’s (9-14) can better cash in on scoring opportunities, they could emerge from this early rut.

“I’m really happy with how we played,” Hyde said. “We play baseball like that, we’re going to win a lot of games.”