Cubs' Shota Imanaga accomplishes goal of pitching deep into September

With his six frames in Monday night’s 9-2 win over the Oakland A’s, Shota Imanaga has pitched 166 1/3 innings for the Chicago Cubs this season.

That’s four more than the goal he set for himself during spring training. Back in March, he told Cubs manager Craig Counsell he had an innings total goal for himself this year, even with the adjustment to pitching in the United States after coming over from Japan.

“Starting the year, I had the goal of throwing 162 innings, and everything was a first, with the ball being different, the mound, the pitch clock,” Imanaga said via interpreter Edwin Stanberry. “So the goal also was to stay healthy.

“In spring training, I talked with Craig about the importance of being able to pitch throughout the season and into September.”

He has achieved that goal, along with a host of other accomplishments this season. That includes getting his 14th win, which is the most of his career, surpassing the 13 wins he notched in 2019 in Japan. But what matters most to Imanaga is he’s still healthy and pitching well at this point in the season. His goal of 162 innings was based on his desire to be physically capable of still pitching at the end of the year.

Imanaga’s outing Monday was probably one of his best. He tossed his 18th quality start of the season, going six innings and striking out a career-high 11 batters while walking only three. Counsell said, going into the start, Imanaga knew the Athletics (a team he’s never faced) would be aggressive at the plate, so he attacked the strike zone with his splitter.

“He probably threw more split-fingers tonight than normal, and that pitch was super effective,” Counsell said. “They were aggressive. We thought they were going to be aggressive to the fastball, and so the split turned out to be a really good pitch tonight.”

Of Imanaga’s 99 pitches on Monday, he used his four-seamer 37 times and his splitter 23 times, getting 22 swings and misses while throwing strikes about two-thirds of the time.

It’s tough to command the zone like Imanaga did and not suffer more damage than the two runs he allowed, both on a third-inning home run by Brent Rooker. Ahead of Rooker, Imanaga walked leadoff batter Jacob Wilson. After the home run, he struck out the next three A’s batters. 

That command of the zone is one of Imanaga’s strengths. He has one of the best strikeout-to-walk ratios in baseball, as at 6.07, he ranks behind only George Kirby, Zach Eflin, and Tarik Skubal. The way Counsell describes it, what Imanaga is good at is what works. He can attack the strike zone aggressively and get outs while avoiding too much traffic on the bases.

“The thing that he’s probably shown to us on such a consistent basis is how good he is at what he is good at,” Counsell said. “And that shows up in the walks, right? There’s no walks, and that is a skill that he has, but there’s also not a lot of hits, so he’s attacking the strike zone and his stuff works in the strike zone. And that’s what the good pitchers can do.”

Imanaga is not totally satisfied with his season.

After Monday’s start, he noted he has allowed more home runs in the second half than in the first three months — he’s given up 17 homers since the start of July after just 10 in April, May and June combined — so as he goes into his final starts of this year, and even as he thinks about working on things for next season, that’s something he wants to address.

“[That] just shows that they’re making adjustments to what I’m doing, especially compared to the first half,” Imanaga said of the home runs. “So I think for the rest of the starts, I just want to figure out how to avoid extra-base hits, avoid home runs and continue to do what I’ve been doing.”

As Imanaga was delivering his quality start, the Cubs offense put on a show. They chased Oakland starter Joey Estes in the second inning with five runs on six consecutive hits, including a Dansby Swanson three-run homer that landed in the left field basket. 

In all, the lineup amassed 18 hits, 14 of which came in the first four innings. Notably, bottom of the order batters Pete Crow-Armstrong and Miguel Amaya both contributed multiple hits. Amaya drove in two runs, and Crow-Armstrong’s second-inning bunt single was a catalyst for the Cubs’ five-run outburst that inning.

“We did a nice job against a pitcher who’s been throwing the ball really well and jumped on him and got some balls to fall,” Counsell said. “Pete’s bunt kind of set up the big inning, and then we got a big swing from Dansby.”

In all, the Cubs put at least one runner on base in every inning except the fifth, eight batters in the lineup had at least one base hit and seven had more than one. That’s the kind of offensive output they lacked in May and June, months that have proven decisive on the season.

Although the harsh mathematical reality is the Cubs’ playoff hopes will almost certainly officially die within the week, Monday’s win provided a glimmer of hope of what is possible in 2025.

Putting aside what could happen in free agency during the winter, there’s reason for optimism on the roster, and that hope was exhibited: Imanaga could cement himself as the top-of-the-order starter with Justin Steele, young bats like Crow-Armstrong and Amaya could create the lineup depth the Cubs lacked earlier in the season, and by next September, maybe they’re lining up postseason opponents.

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