Even after a bit of a hiccup Thursday, Tomoyuki Sugano remains the Orioles’ best starting pitcher this season — faint praise, to be sure, but considering the circumstances, not exactly a small feat.

There were plenty of questions about his transition to Major League Baseball. Little about Sugano suggests that the incredibly decorated 35-year-old Japanese rookie would have this kind of success, other than that it’s nothing new to him. One major league club sent a scout to Japan last year to evaluate targets in Nippon Professional Baseball and didn’t have the soon-to-be Central League MVP on its list of players to see, such was the pessimism about his ability to translate his repertoire here.

Success of any kind is atypical for the Orioles right now. Sugano’s is contradictory in relation to the team itself for how it’s happening, too. The unquestioned bright spot in the rotation is performing without the elite velocity and stuff that drive success in the modern game. That, along with his corresponding pitching style, means you can find any number of data points that suggest he’s been better than he should have been.

Contrast that with an offense that is built on so many progressive principles — consistent hard contact and controlling the strike zone among them — that has plenty to feel good about under the hood but has been stunningly unproductive for large parts of the season.

Maybe the regression monster is coming for him. At this point, worrying about that feels beside the point.

The contrast is just so sharp that it feels fitting in this Orioles season of paradoxes. There’s plenty of room under the large umbrella of things that just don’t make sense.

With a fastball that lives in the low 90s and only one true strikeout weapon in his vast arsenal (his splitter), Sugano gets through games moving the ball around the strike zone, keeping hitters off balance and coaxing weak contact.

That comes at the expense of strikeouts and leaves him exposed to batted ball luck, which has been mostly good, and because of that the results have been beyond reproach. He came into Thursday with four straight quality starts, a 2.72 ERA and a 1.01 WHIP. But, even with those limited baserunners, his lack of strikeouts (5.05 per nine) and slightly elevated home run rate meant his expected stats told a different story.

His expected batting average against of .285 was 60 points higher than the actual one, and the expected slugging percentage against was .503 vs. the actual one of .387.

His xERA was 4.87. Sugano’s FIP and xFIP, which approximate ERA based on strikeouts, home runs and walks, were 4.59 and 4.31, respectively. Not bad necessarily, but not as good as reality. So, when Sugano missed his spot Thursday with a 3-2 sweeper to No. 9 hitter DaShawn Keirsey Jr. and then didn’t elevate a fastball to Byron Buxton enough on the next pitch, the resulting home runs created an Orioles deficit that this particular version of the team hasn’t proved capable of reversing.

Those numbers now: a 3.08 ERA, 4.85 FIP and 4.41 xFIP. The gap still exists, because not much was ultimately different other than the tack-on run taking away his quality start in the seventh. Otherwise, it was a typical outing for Sugano. Eleven of the 18 runs he’s allowed have been via the home run.

The rate at which he’s allowed them (1.54 per nine innings) is below nearly all of his Orioles rotation peers, which is saying something, but is on the higher end overall. We’ve seen what too many ill-timed home runs with runners on base can do to other Orioles starters’ ERAs, so that’s always a risk with Sugano.

He’s demonstrated that he can be careful in those situations and wiggle out of jams. His 87.6% left-on-base percentage is among the best in the game. It’s one of many factors that makes him a joy to watch and is another proverbial pivot point when it comes to his season.

To ignore these potential orange-ish flags because of the inarguable truths that he knows how to pitch and commands the baseball really well feels risky for the same reason that abandoning hope for this team turning things around does. The eyes and brain are really close together, and yet there’s plenty of room for disconnect between them.

The reality is watching Sugano pitch is one of the few joys of this team, even on days like Thursday. The way he locates, keeps hitters guessing, composes himself and does all those things consistently is a treat every fifth game. It would be a shame if that stopped getting the results it has, both for the Orioles and for Sugano himself, who most certainly did not uproot his life and travel halfway around the world with the hopes of winning a World Series only to endure this.

I’m no longer in the business of ignoring the clouds on the horizon when it comes to the 2025 Orioles. It’s far too dark out there for the team as a whole. Where Sugano is concerned, I’m not going to let the potential for rain spoil one of the few treats associated with this team. Might get a little messy, sure. But there’s enough on this team that’s well and truly unenjoyable right now that taking anything away from what little is going well feels like a waste of time.

Might as well enjoy what we can while we can.