BALTIMORE–What happened? Tomoyuki Sugano concluded his first season in the United States with a disappointing outing, allowing three home runs as the Orioles lost their second straight to the New York Yankees, winners of seven straight.
Sugano allowed home runs to Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Ryan McMahon in the Orioles’ 6-1 loss to the Yankees before 46,085 at Yankee Stadium on Saturday.
The 35-year-old Sugano finishes the season with a 10-10 record and 4.64 ERA. In his last seven starts, Sugano had five losses and two no-decisions. He thought he was joining a team he thought would win but didn’t.
“If you look at the Yankees, they’re in the playoff run,” Sugano said through his translator. “They’re a good team. If you look at our team on the other hand, we’re not too far behind, I feel like but, yeah, obviously, it’s an unfortunate season for us.”
New York (93-68) began the day tied with Toronto for the American League East lead.
Judge hit his 53rd home run in the first, Stanton hit his 24th and McMahon his 20th in the second. Sugano allowed a single to McMahon to begin the fifth.
“We saw some pretty good stretches of Tomo,” interim manager Tony Mansolino said. “Facing this Yankees lineup twice in a span of two starts, that’s not an easy task by any means, especially with Stanton and Judge seem to be heating up quite a bit here for their stretch run.”
After Sugano left after 4 1/3 innings, Grant Wolfram allowed the game to unravel when he walked three, hit Jazz Chisholm with a pitch and give up a two-run single to Judge. Chisholm left the game with a left forearm injury.
Only 14 of Wolfram’s 31 pitches were strikes, and a couple of those called strikes by home plate umpire Ramon De Jesus annoyed New York manager Aaron Boone enough to be thrown out of the game.
The Orioles (75-86) had just two hits against Cam Schlitter (4-3) in seven scoreless innings. In his last start, the Orioles had just a run on three hits in 5 1/3 innings against him on September 21st.
Gunnar Henderson doubled in the fourth, and Tyler O’Neill singled in the sixth.
“Tough situation with that the last couple months for that group of hitters.,” Mansolino said. “We know and it’s well documented at this point, and we are incredibly accountable for it that we need to get that fixed.
“So not acceptable by any means. The league is tough. We have faced tough competition but so has everybody else and we’re aware of that. And that’s really gonna be for this organization what has to get done is making that priority No. 1 here this winter is grabbing that group of young hitters and getting them back on track.”
Coby Mayo hit his 11th home run against Paul Blackburn in the eighth.
Right-hander Dom Hamel was claimed off waivers by Texas.
How are Basallo and Beavers doing? Samuel Basallo and Dylan Beavers were hitless in seven at-bats with five strikeouts. Basallo is hitting .165 and Beavers .231
“Not dissimilar to all the other young hitters in the league,” Mansolino said. “And again, I’ve said it, it’s not just our young hitters. Young hitters across the major leagues are struggling. It’s actually more rare for those guys to come in and just have seamless transitions than not.
“So we are accountable for our guys and we do know we’ve got to kind of help those guys forward. And, yes, I do think the league has adjusted to these guys in a lot of ways. Now, I think the positive from both is they’ve kind of supplied some of our biggest moments here late in games against some of the toughest late-inning guys, so the future is incredibly bright for those guys, but is there things we need to do to help those guys and those guys need to do to help themselves? No doubt.”
What does it mean? Sugano pitched creditably early in the season and had another solid handful of starts in the second half of the season, but his last seven were disappointing. It’s unlikely he’ll be back with the Orioles next season.
What’s the stat of the day? Sugano leads the American League with 33 home runs allowed.
“You give up that many home runs, it’s not gonna be a big positive and I think going forward if he’s gonna be in the league, kind of cutting that number down a little bit will help him immensely,” Mansolino said.
What’s the word? “Obviously, the first third of the season, I felt like everything went too well and the middle part of the season there was a like a wall where I hit.”-Sugano on his first season in major league baseball.
What’s next? The Orioles end their season on Sunday with Kyle Bradish (1-1, 2.25) facing Luis Gil (4-1, 3.29) at 3:05 p.m.
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