A look at the Japanese left-hander.
30-year old Shōta Imanaga took the baseball world by surprise in 2024, fashioning a 15-3 won/loss record, with a solid ERA of 2.91 over 29 games and 171 innings and with excellent peripherals. His success doesn’t seem to have been an accident, but almost anyone would expect some regression.
Most prognosticators view Imanaga as an 11- or 12-game winner in 2025, with a record along the same lines as Justin Steele. I think it’s safe enough that we just go with that more conservative sort of estimate and let’s just call his 2025 as something like 11-7. That makes the team 33-22 in round numbers after the top three starters have had their turn and we steer into the somewhat murkier waters of the fourth and fifth starter situations.
Imanaga burst upon the scene as ”The Throwing Philosopher”, gifted with wonderful whimsy and a keen understanding of the market and didn’t hurt his cause by being really, really good at throwing the baseball.
His fastball velocity (91.5) isn’t prepossessing but his pitches vary speeds well and have considerable diagonal movement. Baseball Savant has him at eight useful pitches and he has shown signs of Darvish-like (Darvish-ish?) ingenuity with the ball [VIDEO].
Shōta has gotten a lot of love from the press, who differ with the professional prognosticators in that they are enthused over the possibilities of Imanaga NOT regressing. He’s going to pitch for the Cubs in the Tokyo Series (and it counts!):
He’s hard not to root for. I’d gladly take a 11-7 season from him, though I do suspect a couple more wins and the surrounding effective integers.
Of course, he was part of a combined no-hitter. And he was an All-Star.
In his spare time, Imanaga likes arcade games. Here he takes on the Claw Machine” [VIDEO].
Lastly, to repeat, this leaves the team with a 33-22 record after the top three starters have had their turns. Promising from that point of view, at least. And it’s a conservative estimate snuggled up with recent projections, which have been relatively bullish.
Next we’ll take a look at one of the Cubs’ recent acquisitions, Colin Rea, an ex-Cub who had a creditable season as a Brewers starter.