CHICAGO — The results suggest Shota Imanaga has found his 2024 form. After Thursday’s 8-3 victory over the Cincinnati Reds, Imanaga has a 2.28 ERA in 47 1/3 innings and has emerged as the leader of a rotation that desperately needs some stability.
In addition to Cade Horton being out for the season, Matthew Boyd had a meniscectomy on his left knee Thursday morning. The good news is that of the various outcomes, this procedure is considered to be minor. But the Cubs are still expected to be without Boyd for six weeks.
“Him being hurt does impact the team,” Imanaga said through an interpreter. “I’m just wishing for a fast recovery. But looking at our pitching staff, I think stuff like this happens, so everybody steps up and does what they need to be until he comes back. Just keep on pitching well.”
Even as the injuries pile up, the Cubs haven’t slowed down. They’ve won nine straight on the heels of a 10-game winning streak. They’ve won 15 straight at Wrigley Field and are on a 19-3 run overall. On the season, they’re 26-12, leading the way in baseball’s best division. Imanaga is a big reason why.
Starts like Thursday’s emphasize how good Imanaga can be. They show that bringing back the 2024 magic isn’t unreasonable, and they are getting more and more important. But the reality is that while the results have been brilliant, Imanaga is getting them in a pretty different way than he used to.
Imanaga has always been known as a strike thrower. He’s hammered the zone since his early days in Japan.
“He was trained a lot in Japan to not walk people,” pitching coach Tommy Hottovy said. “I also love not walking people, but also don’t want them to give in 2-0 with a heater right down the middle.”
In his breakout 2024 campaign, Imanaga had a 4.0 percent walk rate and was in the zone 51.7 percent of the time, 15th highest in baseball. This year, Imanaga has been in the zone just 42.9 percent of the time, the sixth-lowest rate for eligible pitchers. But his walk rate has jumped to only a still-strong 7.0 percent while his strikeout rate has also jumped to a robust 28.3 percent.
“A (4 percent) walk rate is extremely low,” Hottovy said. “And teams know that. Teams are much more aggressive off him in the strike zone than the majority of baseball. It’s not about throwing less strikes. It’s about taking advantage of the fact that teams know you command the baseball.”
Last season, not only was Imanaga’s stuff down, but his zone rate also jumped to 54 percent. So he was in the zone more than even in 2024 and paired that with a degradation in stuff. Batters weren’t chasing his pitches as much, particularly his splitter, and it led to pretty rough results down the stretch.
This spring, Hottovy came to Imanaga with a plan.
“In spring training, I told him I want him to try to walk some people at times,” Hottovy said. “In counts where he’d normally give in, just try to nibble and see what happens. He did walk a few guys in spring. And his walk rate is up, but it’s still crazy low.”
The goal was simple. Hottovy knew the opposition expected strikes. So if Imanaga was throwing more strike-to-ball pitches, he’d get that chase rate up and find plenty of success with minimal impact to his walk rate.
“Can we throw competitive pitches that look like strikes and then aren’t?” Hottovy said. “Then teams will be a little bit more aggressive to chase.”
As mentioned, Imanaga has among the lowest zone rates among eligible pitchers in baseball this season. But he’s tops in chase rate at 39.7 percent, a jump of more than 8 percentage points from last season. The splitter, in particular, gets chased 46.8 percent of the time, a more than 13-point jump from 2025.
“At some point, teams are going to start taking that pitch,” Hottovy said. “Then we can adjust.”
On Thursday, the plan continued to work. Imanaga was in the zone just 43 percent of the time and still got a 41 percent chase rate. He allowed one run in six innings while striking out 10 and walking three. But that’s not to say the Cubs don’t have a plan to combat the possibility that teams may lay off the splitter at certain points this season.
“That’s where the sinker has played a little bit this year,” Hottovy said. “If you try to take a chase split and see something hard and away, they’ll go and that’s when you see the groundballs on 2-0, 2-1 counts. Normally, he’d have gone middle or middle up to righties with the (four-seam) fastball. Now he’s buying himself more room to throw more pitches.”
What Hottovy is saying is that the opposition isn’t used to Imanaga throwing his sinker. He threw it 1.2 percent of the time last season. It’s up to nearly 6 percent this year. So when batters see something hard and away, they know it’s not the splitter, but are thinking four-seam. That leads to them not barreling the sinker.
It’s a pitch that Imanaga has a new grip for this season and is throwing with a different intent. That’s led to a more consistent shape, which in turn has made Imanaga more trustworthy of the pitch.
“It’s just arming him with more weapons,” Hottovy said. “He feels really confident with that sinker now. We know the four-seam is really good, and when he gets to the top of the zone it’s great. In the past, there’d be stretches when he didn’t have the slider. If you didn’t swing at the split, you’re just sitting on the heater up. Now he has something else down there.”
Imanaga is healthier and his stuff looks much crisper than last season. But to say he’s back to the 2024 version is too simple an explanation. This is a different version. And perhaps an even better one. Ultimately, with all the Cubs’ pitching injuries, this Imanaga is exactly what the team needs.