He doesn’t have the ceiling of a Yamamoto, but he may have the craftiness of an Iwakuma.
All aboard the Tomoyuki Sugano hype train! (I won’t lie: I’ve only seen 47 seconds of this man throwing a bullpen session, and I’ve already bought my ticket.)
And why not? Backup catcher Gary Sánchez, who caught the Japanese righthander in a bullpen session two days ago, said “woah” a few times, responding to Sugano’s pitch movement and command. Orioles’ pitching coach Drew French described the 35-year-old as having “80 command” on the 20-80 scouting scale. That, to quote CC’s Tyler Young, “is as good as it gets, folks.”
For a guy with Sugano’s pedigree in the Nippon Professional Baseball league, the expectations on the Orioles’ new starter’s shoulders are rather modest, as his one-year, $13-million contract suggests. (Compare that to 26-year-old Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s 12 years and $325 million from the Dodgers.) The Orioles hope that Sugano will play enough of a role to take the ball every fifth day, and if they get more than that, great.
His numbers in Japan have been great throughout his career, but there are questions about his ability to translate that into MLB success. As Mark Brown detailed this week, the two big projection systems – ZiPS and PECOTA – have pretty different ideas about how Sugano’s stuff will play in his first season in the MLB. ZiPS sees him putting up a 4.88 ERA/4.69 FIP over 91 innings—not impressive in any sense. PECOTA is much kinder, predicting a 3.52 ERA in 116 IP, good for a 2.2 pitcher WAR. As the gulf between the two models suggests, there is doubt about how well a 35-year-old NPB product will fare in the big leagues.
Sugano’s pitching credentials in his home country are solid: a career 136-74 record in twelve seasons, a career 2.43 ERA and 1.035 WHIP, and 1,596 strikeouts in 1,873.1 innings. Twice in his career (2017 and 2018) he’s won the Japanese equivalent of the Cy Young, the Eiji Sawamura award. Last season, he was his league’s most valuable player, with a 15-3 record, a 1.67 ERA and a 0.945 WHIP.
One way to hazard a guess about Sugano’s chances is to look at similarly situated pitchers from the NPB who took their shot in Major League Baseball, and with what success. I’ve pulled up five. I’m ranking them here in terms of least to most similar to Sugano’s situation.
Let’s start with the already-mentioned Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who, in parts of seven NPB seasons, posted a 70-29 record, a 1.82 ERA, 0.915 WHIP, 922 K in 967 IP. He won the Sawamura three times in a row. He signed a 12-year, $325 million contract with the Dodgers in December 2023.
Yamamoto is a poor comp with Sugano because he made the leap to MLB much earlier, at age 26, has nice velocity on his heater, and leans mostly on it (40% of his pitches). (Offseason phenom Roki Sasaki, 23, has a 102-mph fastball and seems an even less appropriate comp, particularly as he’s signed a rookie deal with LA for minimum salary, albeit with a $6.5 million signing bonus.)
How did Yamamoto’s debut season go? It was up-and-down for the right hander, whose MLB debut actually came in Seoul, South Korea, against the Padres, where he got crushed, allowing five runs on four hits and a walk in just one inning of work. Things got better, but Yamamoto was eventually shut down in June with a strained rotator cuff and not reactivated until September. Still his overall numbers were good: in 18 starts in 2024, he went 7-2 with a 3.00 ERA and 105 strikeouts. In three postseason appearances, he was a little shakier, earning three wins but posting a 4.77 FIP.
Masahiro Tanaka is a similar story, a young and hyped pitcher out of Japan who spent a long time in the Majors. Beginning at age 18, he pitched seven seasons in Japan, racking up a 119-70 record, a 2.68 ERA, 1.134 WHIP and 1597 K/1805 IP. He won the Sawamura Award twice (2011, 2013).
Debuting for the Yankees in 2014 at age 25, Tanaka had a pretty long and distinguished career as a starter. In seven seasons, he finished 78-46 with a 3.74 ERA/1.130 WHIP and 991 SO/1054.1 IP. He was a two-time All-Star. Since leaving MLB in 2020, he’s pitched four more seasons in the NPB.
Yu Darvish is a slightly better comp for Sugano, because neither is not a velo guy (not at this age, or really ever) and Darvish, like Sugano, trades in a diverse offering (one of Sugano’s nicknames, “Tommy Sugar,” refers to his “sweet” pitch mix—Sugano has better control though).
Darvish pitched a full seven NPB seasons before making the jump to the MLB in 2012 at age 25. His NPB stats (93-38 W-L, 1.99 ERA, 0.985 WHIP, 1,250 K in 1268 IP) are better than Sugano’s, notably in ERA (c.f. 2.43 ERA).
Over 12 seasons in the Majors, Darvish has nice career numbers: a 110-88 record, 3.58 ERA, 1.136 WHIP, and 2,007 K/1,706 IP. He’s a puzzling pitcher because sometimes he looks downright bad, but then he’ll be utterly dazzling. He’s been a five-time All Star, quite an accomplishment in its own right. His longevity owes to his alleged 11-pitch mix, and he keeps tinkering with it to outgame the hitters.
Kenta Maeda is a decent comp in that he came to the Majors slightly late (age 28) and was never a fastball-forward pitcher. When he debuted for Los Angeles in 2016, his average fastball velocity was 90.7 mph. His MLB career has been more struggle than success, though, so O’s fans will hope that Sugano’s 2025 season looks more like good Maeda than bad.
Maeda was, no surprise, another highly decorated pitcher back home: he won the Sawamura twice, including in 2015 when he went 15-8 with a 2.09 ERA in 29 starts. In 2016, he signed an eight-year, $25 million contract with the Dodgers.
Maeda had difficulty finding consistency with LA, bouncing back and forth between rotation and bullpen, and in 2020, he was dealt to Minnesota. Surprisingly, he put together a brilliant year in the Covid-shortened season, finishing 6-1 with a 2.70 ERA and coming in runner up for the Cy Young. However, he regressed in 2021, then missed all of 2022 after Tommy John. He was a barely above-average pitcher for Minnesota in ’23, at 6-8 with a 4.23 ERA. Then he was dealt to Detroit, where the results were worse: 3-7 with a 6.09 ERA in 21 starts.
Hisashi Iwakuma is another plausible comp, both because he didn’t make it to MLB until he was in his 30’s, and because, with a fastball velocity in the lowest 1%, it can’t be said he was a flamethower. Iwakuma decamped for the Majors in 2012 (at age 31), with 11 NPB seasons under his belt. In that time, he’d gone 107-69, with a 3.25 ERA, 1.204 WHIP, and 1175 SO in 1541 IP.
Iwakuma was the least dominant on this list in his home country, but the MLB results were mostly quite good. Although he posted ERA’s north of four in his last two seasons (2016, ’17), Iwakuma had a great 2013, when he was named an All-Star for Seattle. In parts of six seasons, he posted a 63-39 W-L record, a 3.42 ERA and a 1.143 WHIP, even while not striking out too many people (714 SO in 883.2 IP). He also had the distinction of being the second Japanese pitcher to throw a no-hitter (after Hideo Nomo), which he did against the Orioles on August 12, 2015. (Looks like a bad day for Manny Machado, Chris Davis, Adam Jones, Jonathan Schoop, and some other guys rounding out the lineup.)
There you have it. None of the listed pitchers came to MLB as late as Sugano has, at age 35 (he’s been trying to get here for at least five years, but was hurt in 2018 and posted his worst season in 2019, which made American GMs less enthused to pick up the phone). His NPB numbers are great but not the best in this bunch by any stretch.
Will Sugano look more Darvish/Iwakuma- or more Maeda-like as an MLB pitcher? Control is critical, and so is staying ahead of hitters with an evolving mix. We know that “Tommy Sugar” has an impressive mix, with two fastballs (four-seam, sinker), a slider, cutter, curveball, and a forkball. And his career walk rate of 1.7 in the NPB says good things, as does Drew French’s raving about his command.
It’s way too soon to tell what will happen with the O’s newest Japanese starting pitcher signing. Let’s see some more bullpens and in-game action. But the blueprint for success is out there.