In his major-league debut, Shota Imanaga tossed six shutout innings and struck out nine without walking a batter. On a cold, soggy and windy Sunday afternoon against a world-beater Dodgers lineup featuring some of the best hitters in baseball including Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, Imanaga held them to just two hits with three strikeouts through four innings.
The Cubs led the Dodgers 6-0 before the game was delayed 2 hours and 51 minutes due to rain and Imanaga was done for the day. On a day in which multiple hitters delivered, they completed a series win over the Dodgers with an 8-1 victory. Imanaga has now tossed 10 straight scoreless innings to begin his MLB career, the longest shutout stretch by a Cubs starting pitcher since Javier Assad in 2022.
After Justin Steele went down with a hamstring injury on opening day, there are thoughts that Imanaga could assume the role of the Cubs’ ace.
“I want to be an adaptable pitcher,” Imanaga said through an interpreter when he was introduced at Cubs Convention this winter. “Sometimes the situation might call for me to pound the zone with the fastball. Sometimes the situation might call for a lot of breaking balls, but I don’t want to be one style.”
Even without injuries to Steele and Jameson Taillon, there were still a lot of questions about the Cubs’ pitching staff to start the season. If his first two starts are any indication, Imanaga looks poised to be an ace. As he adjusts to playing on one less day of rest than he had in Japan, Cubs manager Craig Counsell says his ability to adapt to big-league hitters will come.
“I think every pitcher … one of their jobs during a game is to read swings. It’s the catcher’s job, it’s the pitcher’s job, that’s part of game calling. I think Shota’s going to prove to be very good at that,” Counsell said before Sunday’s game. “Of course, 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. But he is going to be skilled at making those adjustments. And I think we will see him do that. And I think he’ll do it in the game even when he kind of goes pitch-to-pitch with the hitter he’s faced.”
The 30-year-old Imanaga led Nippon Professional Baseball in strikeouts last year while posting a 2.80 ERA. He joined the Cubs after eight seasons with NPB’s Yokohama DeNA BayStars where he struck out more than 26% of batters faced.
“He will probably learn things just faster than a younger player because he does have a library of adjustments that he’s made just through pitching for a long time,” Counsell said. “And he will use that to make his adjustments just a little quicker than maybe somebody that’s seeing these things for the first time.”
When asked about the success of his first two outings and whether they help him build toward the rest of the season, Imanaga said through an interpreter after the game, “I feel like the season is going to be really long, so it’s not necessarily anything to build confidence. I just want to make sure I stay healthy and then be able to pitch the whole season.”
It’s a small sample size but Imanaga’s early success could be an indication of what’s to come from the lefty hurler. As he becomes more acclimated with his opponents’ swings, something he says he works on by watching videos of hitters as he readies for a game, Imanaga could be a dangerous weapon for the Cubs.
