A joy to watch him pitch: Tomoyuki Sugano now has a 2.72 ERA

That number ranks 10th best in the American League

Orioles fans used to look forward to “John Means Day” and maybe this year that turns into “Tomoyuki Sugano Day.”

He is becoming must-see TV.

The 35-year-old rookie, who had a stellar career in Japan, is 4-2 with a 2.72 ERA through eight starts. He allowed just one run over 7 1/3 innings Friday in his latest strong start to pitch the O’s to a series-opening win at Anaheim.

Sugano right now among the AL leaders:

5^th with 1.6 walks per nine

10^th in ERA

Tied for 11^th with four quality starts

12^th in WHIP at 1.014

13^th in innings with 46 1/3

He also scores well in pitch efficiency. Averaging just 14.7 pitches per inning, Sugano is tied for fourth in the league in that category. That has helped him to throw seven innings or more three times his last five games.

During a season where O’s starters have given up five runs or more 10 times, Sugano has allowed three runs or less all eight of his outings. He has given up two earned runs or less six times and one or fewer three times.

While he showed an outstanding splitter in his third start versus Toronto on April 12, that pitch and his overall stuff seemed to really tick upward when he faced the Yankees April 28 in Baltimore. He fanned eight in five scoreless innings in a 4-3 O’s win. He got, per Baseball Savant, a season-high 17 swings and misses and Yankees batters whiffed on eight of 12 swings against his split.

A whiff is, of course, a swing and miss and whiff rate is the percentage of swings and misses a pitcher gets in all the swings off his pitches. Foul balls don’t count.

In his first five starts, Sugano’s overall whiff rate was 18.9 percent and whiff rate versus his split was 29.8.

Starting with the Yankees game and over his last three starts, his overall whiff rate is up to 25.8 percent and that is 45.9 versus his splitter, generating 17 whiffs on 37 swings.

That number, 45.9, if he had it for the full year would rank fourth best against a splitter in MLB. As it is, Sugano’s splitter whiff rate for the year of 29.0 is 18^th in the majors.

Sugano’s strikeout rate per nine innings was 2.89 his first five starts and is up to 8.35 the last three games.

Sugano, as advertised, has six pitches and knows how to use and command them all.

The O’s staff is throwing a lot of non-fastballs so far this year, as Baltimore ranks 25^th in the majors in FB percentage at 44.5 percent. For Sugano, combining four and two-seam sinkers, his fastball usage is just 29 percent.

And Statcast says he ranks in the top five percent of the majors in offspeed run value. That number is a lot about his split which yields just a .200 batting average and .291 slugging to opponent batters.

His split is his most-used pitch at 25 percent but it’s a deep arsenal. He throws his sweeper 19, four-seam 18, cutter 14 percent, curveball at 13 and two-seamer 11 percent.

He scores well in chase rate (top 22 percent), walk rate (top nine percent) and hard-hit rate (top 34 percent).

Limited to five innings versus the Yankees, where he threw scoreless ball, that is the only outing of his last five that is not a quality start. He missed by one inning.

Sugano seems to be more and more comfortable with his teammates and around the Orioles organization each day and his pitching is getting better too.

Yesterday in this space we wrote about finding hope during a tough year. Right now the right-hander is providing some of that.

Latest pod, solo effort: My most recent Steve on Baseball podcast, a solo effort, dropped Thursday. I discussed a few O’s topics and spent some time detailing my move to Substack. If you want the backstory of that check it out right here.