Shota Imanaga's outstanding, historic start for the Cubs continues

Roughly six weeks into the season, Shota Imanaga hasn’t had much of an opportunity to explore the city of Chicago.

He treks back and forth between his home and Wrigley Field, mostly. The only other habitual stop is at a Dunkin Donuts, where he orders an iced latte.

Despite his immense success through his first nine starts for the Chicago Cubs, Imanaga said he isn’t getting recognized. Even at the Dunkin, he joked that they probably only know him for his indecisiveness. 

“I either order a small iced latte or a medium, so they probably think, ‘This guy can’t make up his mind,’” Imanaga said through his interpreter Edwin Stanberry.

That anonymity shouldn’t last much longer.

After his outing Saturday afternoon, a 1-0 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates, Imanaga lowered his ERA to 0.84. Since ERA became a stat in 1913, that’s the lowest mark for any pitcher through his first nine career starts. His seven scoreless innings against the Pirates pushed his ERA lower than Fernando Valenzuela’s 1981 mark (0.91). That summer, Los Angeles was under the spell of “Fernando-mania.” Perhaps in the summer of 2024, Chicago will be swept up in “Shota-mania.”

“I wasn’t around for Fernando, but if it was anything like this, it’s pretty tremendous, honestly,” said Cody Bellinger, who played for the Dodgers from 2017-2022. “Playing defense behind him, just watching him. How he’s been pitching, it’s really impressive.”

Impressive to the tune of 58 strikeouts and just nine walks in 53 2/3 innings. Imanaga has nine more strikeouts than he has allowed baserunners. Despite his fastball velocity ranking in the 18th percentile, Imanaga is a puzzle for opposing hitters.

That has a lot to do with the fact that there is a high degree of variance in the speed of his fastball and his splitter and sweeper. Where Imanaga’s fastball gets clocked at around 92 mph on average, his splitter and sweeper come in about 10 mph slower. And his curveball is even slower still, averaging about 73 mph. Hitters’ difficulty timing his pitches has helped create one of the best whiff rates in the league (31.4 percent, eighth-highest in baseball entering Monday).

It’s not just the difference in speed, though. Imanaga’s effectiveness in locating his pitches has batters chasing at a very high rate as well. His 36.1 percent chase rate ranks in the 96th percentile. That ability compliments his variance in speed nicely.

“It’s that and the vertical difference, the north-south aspect of those two pitches,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “And then you can add, there’s just not the mistakes, there’s just very few balls that feel hittable for the hitter. You just kind of feel the hitter’s constantly a little between, and that makes both pitches better.”

The Cubs’ starting pitching has been a bright spot thus far in the season — they have a seventh-lowest rotation ERA at 3.32 — and Imanaga has often served as a stabilizing force. His outing Saturday followed a 9-3 loss on Friday. When he earned the ‘W’ after throwing seven scoreless to help beat the New York Mets 1-0 on May 1, that was after the Cubs had just lost 4-2 the day before. 

“Kind of the same scenario, where we’re not scoring,” Counsell said. “We’re having a hard time scoring, and we win two games where we had a really hard time scoring. We’ve won two 1-0 games that he’s started. That speaks to it.”

Imanaga has been practically untouchable so far, but inevitably, the league will adjust. Baseball is a game of constant adjustment and, at times, fluky outcomes. Imanaga is bound for a rough outing or two, at least.

He said he has already felt like he’s needed to navigate some challenging spots and benefited at times from the defense behind him. For Imanaga, his planning is about preparing for when opposing offenses do get to him.

“I’m not trying to go seven [innings] and give up zeroes every time,” he said. “It’s really what to do if I do give up a run, what to do when I give up a hit, and just kind of adjust from there. That’s the game plan.”

So far, Imanaga has not needed to worry much about teams getting hits or scoring against him. Hence, the challenge for Counsell and the rest of the coaching staff is working with Imanaga on preparing for how the league will adjust while batters are not having any luck figuring him out.

“You’re trying to kind of anticipate what’s next,” Counsell said, “and that could be hitter adjustments, that could be how does your body withstand a Major League Baseball season, that could be delivery cues that you learn a little better about yourself as the season goes on to fix yourself a little bit faster in-game. It’s working on all of those things. 

“At this point, the league has not told anything pitch-choice-wise that he should change.”

The rest of the league is coming to terms with the reality that Imanaga is the most dominant pitcher in baseball right now.

That fact has not garnered him a lot of media attention just yet. The Cubs are, at the moment, a second-place team, which is a factor. But as far as Japanese players in the league go, Shohei Ohtani and the Los Angeles Dodgers have justifiably occupied national headlines. 

But Imanaga’s anonymity is bound to be short-lived with the way he is pitching. He passed Valenzuela’s ERA mark, and as the season goes on, it will be increasingly hard to ignore Imanaga’s performance on the mound.

On Sunday morning, the day after his seven shutout innings against the Pirates, Imanaga walked into the Cubs’ clubhouse with his iced latte — a medium this time — in hand. He said he wasn’t recognized yet; he’s still content to be just the guy who can’t decide what size latte to get.

“If he wants it, he deserves it. That’s for sure,” Counsell said of Imanaga getting more national attention. “Because he’s been remarkable, and how he does it is really fun to watch. It’s entertaining. Not just competitively great, it feels entertaining.

“When you start looking at the historic stuff that he’s doing, you look at the history of the game, and when you start getting in this territory, you have to be a little surprised, for sure. We’re fortunate to watch it. It’s been so much fun to watch. Just his aptitude out there, his pitch-making ability, his stuff, his competitiveness, they’ve all been just a joy to watch.

“It’s been so much fun to watch him.”