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After 12 excellent seasons in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, right-hander Tomoyuki Sugano is expected to sign with a major league team. Sugano is a true free agent and thus does not need to be posted. He’s eligible to sign a major league deal with any club for any amount, with no release fee heading to his former club — the Yomiuri Giants. The Angels are among the big league teams with interest in the 35-year-old righty, Jon Morosi of MLB.com reports on the MLB Network (video link; Sugano talk beginning around the 2:55 mark).
A two-time winner of the Sawamura Award (Japan’s Cy Young equivalent), Sugano has flirted with the idea of a major league run before. He was posted by the Giants and gauged interest from MLB teams in the 2020-21 offseason but wound up staying put on a four-year, $40M contract with opt-out clauses after each season (a massive commitment by NPB standards). Beyond the magnitude of that contract, Morosi points out that Sugano had other reasons for feeling committed to his NPB club; Sugano’s uncle, Tatsunori Hara, was in the midst of a 17-year run as the Giants’ manager. He stepped down after the 2023 season, however.
Sugano could perhaps have looked to test free agency last winter, but his 2023 season was cut short by an elbow injury. He began the season on the shelf and wound up pitching only 86 innings with a 3.14 ERA that’s still strong but a ways from his typical standard. There were no such issues in 2024. To the contrary, Sugano enjoyed one of the finest seasons of his career in 2024. The 6-foot-1 righty fired 156 2/3 frames with an immaculate 1.67 earned run average. His 18.2% strikeout rate doesn’t stand out, but Sugano’s 2.6% walk rate was sensational. He’s always had pinpoint command — Sugano has walked just 3.8% of opponents over the past three seasons and just 4.7% in his career — but a 2.6% mark is on another level even by his own lofty standards.
In many ways, Sugano makes sense as an Angels target in particular. The Halos clearly have a dire need for rotation help, but owner Arte Moreno has typically eschewed long-term deals — or even multi-year deals of any kind — for starting pitchers. The three-year, $39M contract signed by Tyler Anderson two offseasons ago was the first multi-year deal the Angels had given to a free agent starting pitcher since Joe Blanton in 2012. The Halos haven’t gone beyond three years for a starting pitcher since signing lefty C.J. Wilson for five years and $77.5M back in December 2011 (MLBTR Contract Tracker link).
Sugano, already 35 years old, isn’t likely to command a long-term arrangement. It’s possible a team could still put forth a multi-year offer, but given his age and lack of experience against big league pitching, a weighty long-term deal would be surprising. That generally meshes with Moreno’s free agent tendencies, and the Angels have sufficient payroll space to put together a compelling offer for Sugano on a one- or two-year arrangement. RosterResource projects a payroll of about $175M right now. That’s roughly in line with where they ended the 2024 season, but Moreno has already stated this winter that his team’s payroll will increase in 2025.
As things stand, the Angels’ rotation is threadbare. They already signed veteran Kyle Hendricks on a one-year, $2.5M deal in hopes that the soft-tossing righty could rebound after a disappointing end to his lengthy Cubs tenure. Joining him in the rotation will be the aforementioned Anderson and righty Jose Soriano, at the very least. The other spots are less concrete. Former first-rounder and top prospect Reid Detmers should get another look but spent much of the 2024 season in Triple-A after struggling in the majors. Righty Jack Kochanowicz posted a 3.99 ERA in 11 starts during last year’s MLB debut but did so with a 9.4% strikeout rate that stood as the lowest of the 541 pitchers who tossed at least 20 innings. Top prospect Caden Dana is largely ready for a look but will need to earn a spot in spring training.
The Angels have been among the most active teams in the still nascent stages of the offseason. In addition to signing Hendricks, they’ve acquired Jorge Soler in a trade with the Braves and given out big league contracts to free agents Travis d’Arnaud (two years, $12M) and Kevin Newman (one year, $2.75M). None of those register as major acquisitions, necessarily, but they’re indicative that Moreno and GM Perry Minasian are indeed aiming to add to the roster in hopes of beating expectations and emerging as a playoff contender next season, as they indicated last month.
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