Why not? I don't think using raw SQL instead of an ORM is particularly uncommon.
The "platform" benchmarks (aspcore-rhtx-pg, aspcore-ado-pg) that appear to skip the ASP.NET Core framework entirely and write raw HTTP responses are definitely not realistic though. I'm going to assume that these are mislabeled because this filter is new and not all the benchmarks have been updated yet.
additionally, I'm not quite sure that this is the recommended way to return database results: https://github.com/TechEmpower/FrameworkBenchmarks/blob/mast...
What I believe is more "realistic" is to:
• Use the framework as described: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/tutorials/first...
To be fair, I'm picking on aspnet core because I like it so much (via F#). The framework is great, but this gaming of public benchmarks (techempower, benchmarksgame) by "breaking the same rules as everyone else" rather than investing time into making these results more useful is disappointing.