Tomoyuki Sugano on Thu, Sep 3, 2026

Sugano steadies with six solid innings, but lefty power remains the lingering issue.

In today's start against Baltimore, Sugano went six innings, allowing six hits and three earned runs while striking out four against a single walk. Coming off a brutal three-start stretch in late August, this outing represents a genuine step toward stabilization — both in innings length and in the command department.

His last ten starts tell the story of a pitcher who lost, then partially recovered, his rhythm. From August 18 through August 29, Sugano was rocked in three consecutive outings, each allowing five or more earned runs and none reaching six innings — a stretch that pushed his season ERA to 5.19 and his WHIP to 1.35 across 25 starts. Tonight's line is his best since the August 12 outing at Arizona (6.0 IP, 2 ER, 5 K), and a strikeout-to-walk ratio of 4-to-1 points to his control settling back down after that rough patch, even with his season strikeout total sitting at a modest 79. The more telling number is the platoon split. Against right-handed hitters, he's allowing a .296 average but has surrendered only seven home runs across 233 at-bats; against lefties, the average actually drops to .271, yet he's already given up 20 home runs and an .891 OPS in 292 at-bats. That's a real contradiction — he isn't getting squared up as often by left-handed batters, but when contact does come, it's leaving the yard at a much higher rate. That long-ball tendency against lefties, more than raw contact quality, looks like the main driver behind his inflated ERA this season.

Unicorn's take: the walk total tonight is the encouraging sign — if he can keep pitching to contact like this, the underlying performance holds up. The number worth tracking next time out is simple: how many balls he leaves over the plate to left-handed bats.