Shota Imanaga's early results living up to the hype for Cubs

The only bad thing about Shota Imanaga’s start against the Los Angeles Dodgers in an 8-1 win on Sunday was that it wasn’t longer. A rain delay that started in the bottom of the 4th inning held Imanaga to just four frames, but he had three strikeouts while holding Los Angeles to just two singles.

Imanaga picked up where he left off in his first start against the Rockies on Monday. A week ago, he gave up just two hits and no walks while striking out nine. Against the Dodgers, Imanaga was on course to do the same. Through 10 innings pitched this season, he has yet to issue a walk.

These are very early results, but Imanaga only walked three batters across four starts during spring training. Last year, in his final season in Japan, Imanaga had 174 strikeouts to just 24 walks, so it is probably safe to assume that he will exhibit similar command with the Cubs. Clearly, he won’t maintain a 12/0 strikeout-to-walk ratio all season long, but Imanaga is showing early that he can handle major league batters.

The challenge as the season progresses is adjusting as opposing teams develop their gameplanning against him. The advantage Imanaga has on that front is that, at 30 years old and with eight seasons in Nippon Professional Baseball under his belt, he will counter-adjust more readily than a typical rookie pitcher.

“He will probably learn things faster than a younger player because he does have a library of adjustments that he’s made through pitching for a long time,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “He will use that to make his adjustments just a little quicker than maybe somebody that’s seeing these things for the first time.”

Adjusting from pitching in Japan to pitching in the United States entails a lot of things, one of which is facing a group of hitters who, on the whole, are better hitters than in NPB. There is less margin for error in a major league lineup, even one of the weakest ones.

“I think the players have the ability to hit the ball harder and farther as a group from one through nine,” Counsell said.

That aspect of professional baseball in the United States Imanaga is handling well so far. Imanaga has a 99th percentile chase rate and a 90th percentile whiff rate. That’s helped him limit opposing batters to just four hits so far.

“Every pitcher, one of their jobs throughout the game is to read swings,” Counsell said. “It’s the catcher’s job, it’s the pitcher’s job, that’s part of gamecalling, is reading swings. And I think Shota is going to prove to be very good at that.”

The handful of times batters have made contact so far, they are barreling the ball and hitting it hard against Imanaga. He’s in the 10th percentile in barrel rate and the 7th percentile in average exit velocity. Like the good early-season numbers, those rates will almost certainly change as the season moves along, and these numbers so far are coming from a very small sample size given how few batters have put the ball in play against Imanaga.

Given his experience in Japan, Imanaga is better equipped to read swings and react to what hitters are doing within his outings. A younger and less experienced pitcher like Jordan Wicks might spend an offseason and spring training working on an adjustment and then show the product of that work, like Wicks did against the Dodgers on Saturday. But someone like Imanaga is going to need less time to adjust.

“Every hitter is a little newer for him, so he doesn’t have a library of information that he’s working on to maybe make those decisions as fast as the next time through the league,” Counsell said. “But he is going to be skilled at making those adjustments, and I think we will see him do that. I think he’ll do it in game, even when he goes from pitch to pitch with a hitter he’s facing for the first time.”

It helps that Imanaga came to the Cubs with an attitude toward growth. He stressed at the Cubs Convention back in January that he is not a finished product and that one of his goals for 2024 was to be an “adaptable” pitcher. Imanaga also said that one of the things that drew him to choose Chicago was the opportunity to keep developing as a pitcher.

“There are adjustments, whether it’s the pitch types or the pitch mix,” Imanaga said at the convention in January via interpreter Shingo Murata. “I recognize that I’m probably categorized as a fly ball pitcher, but everything is an adjustment, and this is going to be a learning experience and I look forward to it.”

Imanaga was headed toward another quality start on Sunday against the Dodgers. He had thrown just 43 pitches when the Wrigley Field grounds crew rolled out the tarp in the bottom of the fourth inning. Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernandez were the only batters who got on base, and after Hernandez’s leadoff single in the second inning, Imanaga had retired nine straight batters.

The rain delay paused the game with the Cubs holding a 6-0 lead and runners on the corners with one out in the bottom of the fourth inning. After a two hour, 51 minute delay, play resumed with Yency Almonte taking over for Imanaga. The Cubs went on to win, 8-1, and take two games out of three against the Dodgers in the weekend series. They went 5-1 on their first homestand of the season.

After quickly earning the affection of Cubs fans by opening up his introductory press conference by reciting the opening lines from “Go Cubs Go,” Imanaga had to prove it on the mound. There is still a long way to go, but the results of his first two starts have been very promising.

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