Can the 35-year-old Japanese veteran meet expectations in his first season in MLB?
When the offseason kicked off back in November, the impending Japanese arrival to MLB who was getting all the attention was pitcher Roki Sasaki. His arrival as an “amateur” rather than a free agent in the posting process put teams on more of an equal footing for signing him, and even a generally pessimistic Orioles fan like me was not immune to believing that he might choose some team other than the Dodgers. He chose the Dodgers.
While the Sasaki drama was playing out, the Orioles signed an entirely different Japanese pitcher who was looking to make the jump to MLB for the 2025 season. The O’s added 35-year-old righty Tomoyuki Sugano into the group for this year on a one-year contract that is set to pay Sugano $13 million.
At MLB Trade Rumors, Sugano was ranked as the #46 free agent in this year’s crop and projected to get a contract worth $12 million. The Orioles were right in line with that. That’s the price for a guy with Sugano’s overseas pedigree. He’s won multiple of Japan’s equivalent of the Cy Young award and is coming off a 2024 season that was one of his best yet.
This is what the two big projection systems – ZiPS and PECOTA – are expecting from Sugano in the 2025 season with the Orioles. What’s listed is different as each website emphasizes outputs in its own way:
- ZiPS: 4.88 ERA, 4.69 FIP, 91 IP, 8.1 K/9, 3.4 BB/9, 0.5 fWAR
- PECOTA: 3.52 ERA, 116 IP, 83 SO, 21 BB, 2.2 WARP
That’s a pair of projections that do not line up with each other’s expectations at all. ZiPS thinks very little of Sugano’s ability to adjust over here, with its depth chart-based projection giving Sugano 23 starts but only the 91 innings pitched. That’s in addition to expecting him to come in the high 4s for ERA, which would be disappointing even for a guy at the back end of the rotation.
On the other hand, the PECOTA projection from Baseball Prospectus is feeling positive overall about Sugano’s output, at least when he pitches. This projection also has 23 starts for Sugano with a much better IP/GS number, even if that number is still smaller than 5.
Though Sugano’s strikeout numbers are weak, he’s also expected to limit walks here, which I think seems like a reasonable way to imagine he might find MLB success – mostly weak contact-oriented pitching. I don’t know which ERA projection that Sugano will live up to, but the PECOTA K/BB numbers are more in line with what Sugano was doing in Japan. His last three seasons in NPB saw him striking out about 6 batters per nine innings and barely walking anyone. In 2024, he had just a 0.9 BB/9.
The over/under discussion below involves the ZiPS projection numbers. We’ll be using ZiPS as this series goes along because that is the projection that is freely available to the public. PECOTA is only open to BPro subscribers.
The case for the over
If you think that Sugano is going to do worse than a 4.88 ERA, then probably you are one of the people out there who thinks that Mike Elias is no longer equal to the challenge of being the Orioles general manager. Sugano going in this direction might nudge more people towards that belief. A mid-priced, ostensibly high-floor contract turning into a big flop would be a strong repudiation of the strategy that was employed this offseason.
It’s been a while since a pitcher who is as old as Sugano has come over from Japan for the first time. The Orioles bringing over Koji Uehara prior to his age 34 season in 2009 might even be the most recent one. That move didn’t turn into anything useful for the starting rotation, though he did end up being a fine reliever here across a multi-year deal. Sugano’s got just the one year to make a good impression on Birdland and if he can’t do it as a starter then he probably won’t make a good one.
The case for the under
Even believing that Sugano will end up merely as the #5 starter in the Orioles rotation would probably mean he’s sporting an ERA about half a run below the ZiPS projection here. Dean Kremer was essentially #5 starter-caliber in the 2024 season and he had a 4.10 ERA. You could have low expectations for Sugano that could be in the range of like 4.30 and still that’s way better than 4.88.
Essentially, unless the signing is an overall net negative for the Orioles, Sugano should beat the ZiPS projection.
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Sugano walked into Orioles camp and one of the first things he said, if not the first thing he said, to the teammates he was just meeting was: “Let’s go win a world championship.” This is the kind of thing that makes me want to run through a brick wall, or perhaps more specifically, because I am a very particular sort of nerd, scream “GANBATTE!” before assuming a posture that is broadly recognized as “powering up for the ultimate move” in all manner of shounen anime.
If every guy who made me think, “This guy seems nice and he sounds excited to win with the Orioles,” had played well for the Orioles, they would have probably won the World Series in my lifetime. Surprisingly, my warm feelings towards any Orioles player have just as much impact on their performance as my ice cold feelings towards any non-Orioles player. That is, no impact at all. They will be good or they will stink regardless of anything I say about them. I know, it’s crazy.
The ZiPS model thinks Sugano will end up as the kind of forgettable one-year Orioles pitcher who we’ve seen all too many times. PECOTA is more inclined towards a fun short-term Orioles story in the vein of Nelson Cruz. I hope BPro’s model is right about this one. What do you think?
Tomorrow: Heston Kjerstad