MILWAUKEE — From the outside looking in, Tomoyuki Sugano appears as though he’s this stoic mastermind on the mound.

He’ll collect outs without cracking a grin.

He’ll record strikeouts and keep pace back to the dugout.

He’ll give up a home run, then trot back out an inning later like it never happened.

The 35-year-old rookie from Japan almost looks detached from reality, an emotionless arm leading Baltimore’s rotation.

He’s actually a goofball with an impressive recallwho has plowed through the learning curve of adjusting to MLB’s bigger baseball, smaller strike zone, shorter rest, a pitch clock and a league chock-full of power hitters.Sugano has pitched seven or more innings thrice and holds a 3.07 ERA, both the strongest marks among Baltimore starters.

His 1.2 wins above replacement, according to Baseball Reference, is tied for a team high. He helped end a five-game losing streak in Anaheim, California, then put the brakes on an eight-game skid in Wednesday’s 8-4 win over the Milwaukee Brewers.

Why does he think he’s been so efficient transitioning to baseball on this side of the world?

“I think the biggest thing, something that leads to a good, efficient outcome,” Sugano said through team interpreter Yuto Sakurai, “I just make sure I communicate well.”

Communication for a native Japanese speaker in a predominantly English- and Spanish-speaking clubhouse manifests in different ways.

Gunnar Henderson said Sugano, who brought three boxes of Insomnia Cookies for his teammates in Milwaukee this week, “brings his own special energy.” Like when he’ll go up to pitching coach Drew French, tongue-in-cheek, and say, “Hey look, I’m not gonna be able to pitch on Saturday. Those orange pants, I can’t pitch in those pants.”

French and catcher Adley Rutschman used the same word to describe the communication they’ve developed in pregame meetings together: “Streamlined.”

“Obviously you’re not saying stuff directly to him,” Rutschman said. “It’s like going through two outlets to go there and back, but it’s worked out great so far. … He knows what works for him, which makes it a lot easier.”

Added French: “I think his ability to retain information, his ability to adjust, his ability to feel and read things. And just have a really good dialogue of baseball. When you’re working through an interpreter a lot, you’re trying to unearth what’s what. … We’re still learning each other, definitely, but the learning curve is much shorter because of his personality.”

There were no doubts about Sugano’s pitching ability when he joined the Orioles. In Japan, he won the Sawamura Award, Nippon Professional Baseball’s equivalent to the Cy Young Award, in 2017 and 2018. He was named the league’s Most Valuable Player three times. And he threw a no-hitter in the 2018 playoffs.

Baltimore’s only question when signing Sugano to a one-year, $13 million deal was how well — and how quickly — he’d acclimate to this MLB clubhouse. Almost right away, they saw the signs.

There was a pair of starts one week during spring training that made French tilt his head. Sugano pitched the second game of a doubleheader against Minnesota on March 9, then was back on the bump March 14 against the Twins, who recycled five or six of the same hitters. French was gobsmacked by Sugano’s detailed memory from the first outing to the second. It’s not the pitch movement that he fixates on, it’s the combinations working his arsenal and hitter tendencies that stick in his brain.

“That’s when I say, ‘OK, he’s paying attention to some of the right stuff,’” French said.

Here’s another example: Sugano, whose PitchCom feeds calls in English, will sit in a pregame meeting with French, Rutschman, Sakurai and Ryan Klimek, among others.

Klimek, their bullpen coach, steers a good chunk of those discussions. Someone might raise a hand to suggest, for example, Sugano’s sweeper-to-splitter combo against a particular batter that day.

Sugano will jump in, “Oh, yeah, we did that against (Anthony) Volpe,” citing an at-bat from a previous week against the New York Yankees shortstop.

“He pays attention to those things,” French said, “and I think that’s the best that I’ve been around.”

In Japan’s NPB, Sugano was the veteran in his clubhouse imparting wisdom on the younger guys, the one to help others recalibrate after a troubled outing. In Baltimore, the language barrier prevents him from being so forthcoming. So he’ll set the tone by how he carries himself: Cool as the back side of the pillow.

“I laugh, he’s had some great outings this year,” interim manager Tony Mansolino said, “and every time in he comes in the dugout, it looks like no big deal to him.” French described it this way: “He doesn’t need like, ‘Gimme five minutes. I need five minutes to get my life back together.’ It’s just, ‘What’s next?’ That seems to be the blinders that he has on.”

In fact, Sugano gets better after making a mistake. In the first three innings of a game, he owns a respectable 4.33 ERA. That figure dips to 1.75 from the fourth inning onward (he’s pitched six-plus innings in half of his outings).

French and his staff aren’t trying to force-feed Sugano information and pressure him to adjust to their style. What’s worked about this partnership is, as Sugano said, effective communication. That, and his command on the mound.

“Ask him to throw a high curveball, he can throw a high curveball. Ask him to throw a split down and away to a righty, he can do that,” French said. “At the end of the day, it’s kind of a joke in a way where it feels like you’re playing ‘MLB The Show.’”

Sugano signed in December. There were a series of video calls between then and the start of spring training, game planning for how this partnership might work. The last one was sometime around the end of January. Rutschman and Gary Sanchez were both logged on. Then-manager Brandon Hyde and then-catching instructor Tim Cossins joined. The entire pitching department was there.

They asked Sugano to explain why he is the way that he is. They asked what he believes has made him so successful. What were the things that mattered most to him in this job? What does he anchor to when he needs to get going again?

The man whose dream it was to come pitch in the states waxed eloquently about his decorated NPB career and an intense hunger to prove himself here.

“In a large way,” French said, “they’ve shown up and rang true.”

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