BALTIMORE — When Miles Mikolas signed with Japan's Yomiuri Giants to go abroad before finding his way back to the majors, his new team sent him a DVD of their best pitcher and some instructions.

“Do this. This is the best we’ve got.”

The pitcher on the screen was Tomoyuki Sugano.

“And they weren’t wrong,” Mikolas said.

Eight years after Mikolas left the Giants to sign with the Cardinals and they parted as teammates, the right-hander and Baltimore starter Sugano reunited for the first time Monday morning at Oriole Park in Camden Yards. During that time, Mikolas has been a two-time All-Star, signed two extensions with the Cardinals and often told teammates and reporters alike about the Giants right-hander who was long overdue for his chance in Major League Baseball.

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In the outfield Monday, he mentioned that to Sugano.

“Hey, you’re late,” Mikolas said. “You should have been here four or five years ago.”

The Cardinals get a chance to see what Mikolas has been talking about on Tuesday when Sugano starts for the Orioles. The 35-year-old right-hander signed a one-year, $13 million deal with Baltimore this past winter, and he’s been a highlight during Baltimore’s disastrous start. If both of those trends continue — the pitcher rising, the Orioles nosediving — Sugano will be one of the more sought-after starters at the trade deadline. Mikolas won’t be his only advocate.

In his first 10 starts with the Orioles, Sugano has a 3.07 ERA and 32 strikeouts in 58 2/3 innings. He’s pitched at least six innings in his past four starts, and half of his starts have been quality starts. Through the first third of the season, Sugano has four of the Orioles rotation’s 12 wins.

“He did a lot of things that any pitcher can admire,” Mikolas said. “Watching the way he attacked hitters over there was big for me because how am I going to attack hitters that I’ve never seen before that I know have a different style of hitting. It’s not the same style that everybody is used to over here, so he was a good guy to sit back and watch how he attacked hitters.”

Sugano won two Sawamura Awards, given to the top pitcher in Japan’s highest league, and the first came while teammates with Mikolas. In 2015, their first year together, Sugano went 10-11 to Mikolas’ 13-3 but edged Mikolas in ERA, 1.91 to 1.92. In 2017, Sugano won his first Sawamura Award by going 17-5 with a 1.59 ERA in 187 1/3 innings. Mikolas went 14-8 that season — his last in Japan — and had a 2.25 ERA but topped Sugano in innings (188) and strikeouts (187).

While watching Sugano, Mikolas marveled how still his Giants teammate kept his head during his delivery and how that helped with his control.

Mikolas worked on doing the same thing and ultimately adopted that as a focus by the time he returned to the majors and joined the Cardinals.

Sugano had starring turns on the global stage and did explore coming to he majors before this season. In 2017, he started for Team Japan against Team USA, and it did not take long for Cardinals third baseman Nolan Arenado to remember how that went for him and his U.S. teammates. Arenado recalled how he “struck out three times,” and Sugano also struck out MVPs Giancarlo Stanton and Christian Yelich in a semifinal at Dodger Stadium.

Mikolas said he and Sugano caught up on teammates — who is a coach, who is still playing — and did discuss returning together to the Giants.

“I told him that first year, ‘You’ve got great stuff, and you’ve got to get to the MLB,’” Mikolas said. “I think he knew it. I hope other than (Tuesday) he doesn’t give up any runs, that he has a great season and I hope he stays for a couple of more years, and then we bot go back and play one more year together.”

Arenado sore, gets a break

Arenado found himself tangled in more than the net when he plunged into the seats Sunday after making a key ninth-inning catch in foul territory during. He got snagged by the rulebook, too.

A catch on a foul pop-up by Ketel Marte took Arenado into the seats after he made the catch. Arenado took a seat to the kidney area and had the wind knocked out of him, and he flung the ball back from a seated spot in the net. Because Arenado returned the ball while out of the field of play, Arizona’s base runners both advanced a base, putting them in scoring position and placing the tying run at third base, a wild pitch away from leveling the game.

“That’s a pretty bad rule to be honest with you,” Arenado said. “I can’t believe that’s a rule.”

Arenado was not in the lineup Monday as he received another day to rest. The Gold Glove-winning third baseman said he was pretty sore but would be OK by Tuesday.

He did receive texts from other players about his catch.

More, he joked, were asking how his body felt.

“When he first popped it up, I didn’t think I was going to have to go that far,” Arenado said. “But the wind was kind of going that way. I kind of kept checking, and I found myself having to run harder and harder for it. Ideally, I would have liked to get there a little quicker and camp under it. The wind took it a little more than I thought.”

Birds of a different feather

In his first at-bat this season against his former team, Dylan Carlson singled, stole second and scored to double Baltimore’s lead to 2-0 on Monday afternoon. Then he homered to launch them to a 5-0 lead in the fourth inning.

Fresh off his first homer of the season for Baltimore on Sunday at Fenway Park, Carlson started in center field Monday and was one of a handful of former Cardinals on the Orioles roster as the two teams opened an interleague series. Carlson, reliever Andrew Kittredge and outfielder Tyler O’Neill all signed with Baltimore this past season as free agents. O’Neill is on the injured list with a left shoulder injury, and it’s his second time on the IL in the first year of a three-year, $49.5 million deal with the O’s.

Kittredge began the season on the IL after knee surgery in spring training, and he recently returned to a setup role in Baltimore’s bullpen. Kittredge set a Cardinals club record with 37 holds in 2024. He allowed one run in his first three innings and three appearances for Orioles.

Baltimore’s designated hitter Ramon Urias also had ties to the Cardinals organization. He spent 2019 in the system, starting mostly for Memphis and batting .263 with nine homers in 96 games for the Cardinals’ top affiliate.

Extra bases

First-base coach Stubby Clapp rejoined the team in Baltimore after being with family for his son’s graduation this past weekend.

Bernal is the first Springfield catcher to win the league’s player of the week award since 2015, though Jimmy Crooks won the league MVP this past season as the S-Cards’ catcher.

The Orioles added Chadwick Tromp to the roster shortly before first pitch as a third catcher.

In the wake of three managerial firings before Memorial Day, author and longtime baseball writer Scott Miller joins the Best Podcast in Baseball to discuss his new book, "Skipper: Why Baseball Managers Matter (and Always Will)". In his deeply reported work, Miller talks with managers, both current and past, to map the changing landscape of the role as front offices and analytics become more dominant and a perception grips the game that, as Miller writes it so well, lineups are being written for the manager not by the manager.

With BPIB host and baseball writer Derrick Goold, Miller discusses the evolution of managers in the game from Sparky to Tony to Bochy, the traits that make a successful manager, and also how those traits have changed and adapted to a game driven more and more by data and run like the big business it is.

The two baseball writers also explore what happens to game if, as one executive told Miller in his book, the hiring practices and analytics used in the game leave the majors "with a very homogenous group of managers."

The managerial aspirations of Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina, and others are explored as a way to avoid that.

Miller has covered baseball for the New York Times, Bleacher Report, and many other outlets, and his book shows the depth of his understanding in the game and access to some of the great managers. He watches a Yankee game at the Boone house as Aaron manages; he spends time with Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts on the job and with Hall of Fame-bound manager Dusty Baker at the vineyard. Miller also talks with former Cardinals manager Mike Matheny and gains welcome perspective on his tenure during a changing time for the role.

Miller's book is available now.

On Amazon .

At a local independent bookstore like St. Louis' Left Bank Books .

The Best Podcast in Baseball, sponsored by Closets by Design of St. Louis, is a weekly production of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, StlToday.com , and Derrick Goold.

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