Tomoyuki Sugano pitched an excellent seven innings to help the Orioles win a season-high fourth straight game.
The Milkman is back! The Orioles season went into the dumps without Colton Cowser around. On Tuesday, he returned to the O’s lineup in Seattle and hit a home run, part of a 13-hit onslaught by the O’s offense that helped deliver a 5-1 win over the Mariners. And if you’ll forgive me for getting carried away after writing about a win on Camden Chat for the first time since Opening Day (really, it’s ridiculous), I will also observe this: The 2025 Orioles have a winning record when Cowser plays.
Neglecting to mention starting pitcher Tomoyuki Sugano in the previous paragraph was unfair of me. I offer him my apologies in his native language: Gomen nasai. The 35-year-old righty who’s made his way over to MLB for the first time this season just keeps on piling up impressive outings against whatever opponent he has to face on a given night.
It is not success that looks like very many successful incumbent MLB pitchers. Sugano just doesn’t strike many guys out. With five strikeouts in seven innings on Tuesday, Sugano now has 42 strikeouts in 71 innings this year. That’s a K/9 of 5, literally the lowest of any of the 82 qualified pitchers (one inning per team game) entering Tuesday’s action. He lowered his ERA to 3.04 and raised his innings pitched per game almost to 6. Sugano is starting to garner some steam – probably only among homers, for now – for either an All-Star bid or Rookie of the Year contention.
The Orioles handed Sugano the first lead of the game before he even had to come out to pitch. They loaded the bases with one out in the bottom of the first inning, three straight singles from Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Henderson, and Ryan O’Hearn. A big hit with runners in scoring position proved elusive, but the Orioles did manage to get the deep fly ball with only one out, with thanks to Ramón Urías for cashing in. One run was all that they got.
Seattle tied the game in the second inning. Although Sugano successfully negotiated MLB home run leader Cal “The Big Dumper” Raleigh to lead off the inning, he made a mistake pitch with two outs to Rowdy Tellez. The baseball went a long way. Tellez rounded the bases after his ninth homer of the season and the game was tied at 1-1. This proved to be the end of the offense for Seattle against Sugano.
It took until the fifth inning for the Orioles to get back on the board and give Sugano the lead again. Rutschman, Henderson, and O’Hearn again singled consecutively. With two outs, the runners didn’t have to go station-to-station and the result was O’Hearn collected an RBI with Rutschman crossing the plate. This was a 2-1 Orioles lead that they would not relinquish. Cowser added his home run in the sixth for a 3-1 lead.
Across his seven innings of work, Sugano finished with just five hits allowed and only one walk. Allowing fewer than one baserunner per inning is usually going to be a good sign for a starting pitcher’s outing. It’s fun. There can still be fun things happening even for this Orioles team. Rutschman had three hits. Great! Henderson and O’Hearn collected multi-hit games, as did Heston Kjerstad.
The Orioles offense even managed to add on insurance runs in the ninth inning to take the game out of save territory for Félix Bautista. This time, it was bottom of the lineup guys Coby Mayo and Kjerstad who opened up the rally. Mayo hit a single and scored as Kjerstad hit a double. Later in the inning, Jackson Holliday cashed in a fifth run as pinch runner Jordyn Adams came home to score.
Perhaps because they’d already gotten Bautista warmed up, the Orioles decided to use him in the ninth even though it was no longer a save situation. He last pitched on May 31, and while avoiding overwork is important, avoiding rust is also important. Bautista retired the side in order with no drama, except for what little the first base umpire blowing a call to start the inning could produce. Replay quickly corrected this mistake.
Watching a game like this, you can start to imagine that maybe the original plan for the lineup this year was not a bad one and that once the Orioles can get back to Plan A, things might be okay. Jordan Westburg may wrap up his rehab assignment in time to join the team in Sacramento, and then we’ll really see what this group can do with everyone knowing they’re pretty close to full strength.
Sad as it is to note this after the 59th game of the season, Tuesday’s win added to the previous sweep of the White Sox means that this is the first winning streak of at least four games for the Orioles this season. They’ll try to stretch that out to five in a row as the series continues on Wednesday night with another late 9:40 start time for those of us back east. Cade Povich is set to start for the O’s, with Emerson Hancock starting for the Mariners.