KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Whoever took the mound for the Orioles in Toronto six days ago, it wasn’t Tomoyuki Sugano.

At least not the Sugano who dominated for 12 seasons in Nippon Professional Baseball, racking up 136 wins and collecting three Central League Most Valuable Player awards. The one who built a career on a blistering fastball, then reinvented himself as a control artist with a deep arsenal, walking less than a batter per nine innings last season.

The Sugano who pitched against the Blue Jays on March 30 issued two free passes in the first frame, then left after four innings with cramps in both hands. That Sugano looked like a rattled rookie making his first big league start. Which, in fairness, he was.

But the Sugano who took the ball for the O’s in Kansas City on Saturday was a wily veteran, utilizing a six-pitch mix to fool and fluster Royals hitters on a blustery afternoon. He was precise — one walk and one hit batter — and unfazed — four runners stranded — in an 8-1 win, his first as a major leaguer.

That was the Sugano the Orioles were hoping to get when they lured him from the Yomiuri Giants and handed him $13 million to move to Major League Baseball at age 35. And if this is the player the O’s will get the rest of the way, they should be pleased with their investment.

“Obviously, I’m not here to win one game in the major leagues,” Sugano said after the game through interpreter Yuto Sakurai. “I’m here to win day to day and, ultimately, get the championship. But, yeah, after all that, I was still happy.”

Sugano displayed the craftiness and control that made him so attractive to Baltimore’s front office, spreading five hits across 5 1/3 innings.

“Obviously last time through it was my first outing in the major leagues,” Sugano said. “This time, I was a little more patient, comfortable.”

His only mistake was a hanging curveball to Bobby Witt Jr., who drove it over the left-field wall in the sixth inning for his first home run of the season. It came after a prolonged top of the frame, when the Orioles plated four runs, all while Sugano tried to stay warm in the dugout.

“I tried to move around, keep myself warm,” he said. “Yeah, I gave up the home run to Witt, but I’ll try to be careful next time making sure I keep myself warm. But, ideally, I don’t want to pitch in cold weather like this.”

Sugano’s teammates doused him in beer in the clubhouse postgame, a tradition for rookies. Though Sugano noted that the suds shower is reserved for championships in Japan, he didn’t mind.

“I was really happy to get that treatment,“ he said. ”It made me feel like I want to succeed even more.”

Manager Brandon Hyde has waited patiently for anyone other than Zach Eflin to step up in his rotation. Coming into Saturday’s game, O’s starters were 29th in ERA, ahead of only the Minnesota Twins. Both quality and quantity have been missing — Eflin is still the only starter to complete six innings for the team this season.

Sugano didn’t provide the length Hyde was hoping for, throwing just 88 pitches in 5 1/3 innings. But he gave the Orioles’ bats more than enough leeway to pull out a win over the team that bounced them from the postseason last October.

Hyde saw a “way more comfortable” Sugano on the mound Saturday.

“I thought he was probably a little nervous that first start,” Hyde acknowledged. “Just really good command like he had in spring training of all of his pitches. Really good split. Fastball command was there. All pitches. Being able to throw anything in any count and keep guys off balance. I thought he was absolutely outstanding today.”

On another chilly, windy day at Kauffman Stadium, the Orioles failed to leave the yard for the fifth time in the last six games. But Baltimore racked up 12 hits with a little help from the batting-average-on-balls-in-play gods.

A day after Dean Kremer was, in his own words, “BABIP’d” by softly hit balls that found open space, the O’s offense was the beneficiary of such luck Saturday. Three key Orioles hits in that sixth inning — a flare from Ryan Mountcastle and ground balls from Ramón Urías and Jackson Holliday — each had an expected batting average under .250, per Statcast. Yet each resulted in a single, allowing the O’s to push their lead to 6-0.

While the Orioles wait for the warm weather to return, they’ll need more afternoons like this, where the line moves consistently without the use of a home run.

There was some loud contact, though. Holliday, starting at shortstop, drilled his first triple of the year into the cavernous right-center gap in the fifth. Not to be outdone, right fielder Tyler O’Neill clocked his first triple since 2022 with the Cardinals, driving in a pair of insurance runs in the seventh.

The O’s have work to do to prove their rotation can hold up over the course of the regular season. But on Saturday, things looked a little bit more like they should.