When Shota Imanaga first broke out the slow version of his curveball, pitching coach Tommy Hottovy’s stomach dropped.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what happened? Is he hurt?’” Hottovy said in a conversation with the Sun-Times Tuesday.
It was a fun anecdote as Hottovy told it five days earlier. But at the moment, it was downright confusing. The pitch looped in at 54 mph, a drastic change of speeds. Catcher Miguel Amaya was equally perplexed. He’d called a normal curveball, which Imanaga throws at 73 mph.
Imanaga hoped starting the at-bat with a pitch that wasn’t in the report on him would throw off the Cardinals’ Paul Goldschmidt, who had already homered on the fastball and singled on the splitter. Goldschmidt somehow managed to stay behind it for a seventh-inning double. But it was a reminder that for all of Imanaga’s success in his rookie season, the 30-year-old lefty still has more tricks up his sleeve.
He kept the eephus in his back pocket against the Twins on Tuesday. But in the Cubs’ 7-3 win, Imanaga tied a career high with 10 strikeouts. The only runs he allowed in seven innings came on Royce Lewis’ fourth-inning homer — which was one of only two hits Imanaga yielded.
“The splitter, sometimes when it was getting hit [earlier in the season], it was left in the zone,” Imanaga said through interpreter Edwin Stanberry. “So it’s not that I remembered how to use the splitter to get the swing and misses; I kind of figured it out again. And I’ve been getting the results.”
Imanaga’s enthusiasm for development, and his anticipatory approach to the cat-and-mouse game, bode well for his evolution not just this year, but over the length of his contract, which could be as long as five years if the team picks up the option.
“It’s really just his openness and his curious nature that I think have led him to, one, really just being himself,” manager Craig Counsell said, “but also being able to just take in things, and apply the things that he can make work for him and make him a little bit better, and doing that all while adjusting to a brand-new game.”
When Imanaga made the transition from Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball to Major League Baseball, the Cubs homed in on his riding four-seam fastball and dropping splitter.
“He threw like seven pitches in Japan, and there were some good ones, but we knew how good the fastball splitter were,” Hottovy said. “So we wanted to set that as our baseline. And then we knew we were going to be able to supplement all the other pieces in when we needed to. We wanted to let the game dictate that and not try to search for time to use those.”
There was intricacy even in Imanaga’s baseline two-pitch mix. Hottovy estimated Imanaga has thrown three or four variations of his splitter/changeup. He uses whatever feels best that day.
The key to the four-seam fastball early on was adjusting to a new strike zone, and especially seeing how well the pitch played at the top of it.
The Cubs’ hunch that the combination of those two pitches would be highly effective against major-league hitters was quickly supported. Imanaga collected National League Rookie of the Month honors in April and a sub-1.00 ERA through his first nine starts.
Though the four-seamer and splitter have remained the stars of Imanaga’s pitch mix, he can turn to his slider, curveball, sinker, and a more cutting version of his fastball to throw off hitters. On Tuesday, threw four sweepers and a curveball to supplement his go-to pitches, according to Statcast.
“It’s fun to see him find the right times to utilize all those other weapons,” Hottovy said.
As Imanaga builds out his MLB career, and opponents see more of his unique fastball and splitter, the rest of his arsenal should help him remain unpredictable.
“I feel like he has been in this league for a while – it looks like it, the way he pitches, his confidence up there,” Amaya told the Sun-Times. “And so far it has been phenomenal. And I just wish him to keep continuing doing what he’s been doing.”