Article: Shota Imanaga is the Most Intriguing Remaining Free Agent for the Cubs

[Matthew Trueblood]

There's only one week left in the posting window for the second-best Japanese starting pitcher coming to MLB this winter, and the Cubs remain in the mix for him. Let's take a deeper dive.

Image courtesy of © Rhona Wise-USA TODAY Sports

While he won't sign for anywhere near as much money as the Dodgers recently gave Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shota Imanaga is an exciting talent in his own right. No pitcher who appeared in last year's World Baseball Classic showed better raw stuff than Imanaga. His fastball was cranked up into the mid-90s, and spinning at the top of the zone with movement that no other hurler on Earth can match. He missed bats with his splitter, slider, and curveball. That international success was an affirmation of the impressive numbers he put up in NPB competition for the few years before that, and he further proved his excellence by having his best campaign to date in NPB last season.

That said, the stuff Imanaga showed in shorter bursts and with the adrenaline of a postseason atmosphere in the WBC shouldn't be expected to translate perfectly to MLB. His average fastball velocity last year in NPB was more like 92 miles per hour than 94, where he was sitting in the WBC. That difference matters, obviously. So does the fact that, given Imanaga's stuff profile, his greatest vulnerability is to the home run. If that was true in NPB, it will certainly be so in MLB, and that could limit his upside.

Still, we're talking about special stuff. Imanaga led NPB in strikeout rate in 2023, and that was with a more fastball-forward mix than we should expect to see him use in MLB. Even without average-plus velocity, he's going to have success and miss bats with his fastball, because the thing takes off like a jet at the top of the zone. Last year, 360 pitchers threw at least 200 four-seamers in MLB. Only one (Baltimore closer Felix Bautista) got more rising action on his fastball than did Imanaga at the WBC. We shouldn't expect Imanaga to sustain quite that much carry over a full MLB season, but he'd certainly land somewhere in the top five percent of all hurlers in this regard.

The top 25 players on the aforementioned list of 360 got whiffs on an average of 23.7 percent of opponents' swings against the fastball. That's solidly north of 21.3 percent, the median mark for the league. In other words, carry on the fastball means whiffs, and Imanaga has carry, so he will get whiffs. The question will be whether he can accustom himself to pitching more carefully, to account for the fact that MLB hitters have more power and can punish even slight mistakes more thunderously than NPB hitters typically do. That means going to the fastball less often in traditional fastball counts, and showing sufficient command of his four or five other pitches to throw them for strikes on the edges of the zone.

For Cubs fans who long for more swing-and-miss out of the starting rotation, Imanaga holds obvious appeal. He's likely to get a nine-figure deal, but he could be well worth that. He's going to rack up strikeouts, and he was tremendous at limiting walks in NPB. He'll have to give up a little of that zone-pounding mentality in order to adapt to MLB, but that might only let him strike out hitters more effectively.

If he's a high-strikeout, low-walk, low-BABIP, high-home run rate guy, that's the sketch of an effective pitcher. It could take a broad range of specific forms, with the value he provides varying widely. A handful of similar hurlers to consider (from least to most exciting) include Drew Smyly, Kenta Maeda, Michael Pineda, Masahiro Tanaka, and Kevin Gausman. There's legitimate frontline starting upside, and if he can stay healthy on an MLB rotation schedule, the floor is relatively high.

Imanaga has never made more than 25 starts or thrown more than 170 innings in a single season. In one reading, that's discouraging, because he certainly doesn't profile as a workhorse, the way a team might prefer a pitcher to if they're going to commit more than $20 million per year for five years. Given his size (5-foot-10, 176 pounds), that wouldn't be a fair expectation, anyway. In another reading, though, that means that the odometer on his arm is much less daunting than those of some other pitchers just entering their 30s. He might hold up unexpectedly well, just because he hasn't been asked to shoulder heavy workloads during his 20s. 

How much would you pay for Imanaga? Is he atop your list of remaining free-agent targets for the Cubs?

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[CubinNY]

He's someone the Cubs should go after. It's less obvious if they are interested given the price tag.

[Bertz]

Fun fact, Dan Szymborski's ZiPS projections have Imanaga as a better pitcher than Yamamoto on a per inning basis.

I've been beating the Imanaga drum almost all offseason.  I think every single mock I've done included him or Glasnow.  I'm still mostly feeling good about this offseason and have been rolling my eyes at the fanbases histrionics, but if Jed misses on Shota I think that's when I join the masses and start getting pretty nervous.

His major wart is he's given up a ton of dongs, but it seems to be a simple case of having a fastball that is better suited for the top of the zone than the bottom, while Japanese baseball is still mostly in its pound the knees / groundballs über alles phase. 

The velocity is not ideal given the other soft tossers we have, but then again every time push has come to shove Jed has backed off on that requirement.  Much in the same way that I keep saying I'm going to grow up and stop eating poptarts for breakfast every morning and then drop that resolution when I run into the slightest inconvenience.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

15 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Fun fact, Dan Szymborski's ZiPS projections have Imanaga as a better pitcher than Yamamoto on a per inning basis.

I've been beating the Imanaga drum almost all offseason.  I think every single mock I've done included him or Glasnow.  I'm still mostly feeling good about this offseason and have been rolling my eyes at the fanbases histrionics, but if Jed misses on Shota I think that's when I join the masses and start getting pretty nervous.

His major wart is he's given up a ton of dongs, but it seems to be a simple case of having a fastball that is better suited for the top of the zone than the bottom, while Japanese baseball is still mostly in its pound the knees / groundballs über alles phase. 

The velocity is not ideal given the other soft tossers we have, but then again every time push has come to shove Jed has backed off on that requirement.  Much in the same way that I keep saying I'm going to grow up and stop eating poptarts for breakfast every morning and then drop that resolution when I run into the slightest inconvenience.

 

This is really the thing for me.  Is he the good/prime version of Ryu, or are the HR systemic enough that he's more like the post-prime version of Ryu(or Maeda, to use another import).  If it's the former then I'm not overly cowed by the 9 figure contract, but if you aren't really sure then you're setting up risk of another FA SP that lands like Taillon did(though I don't think Taillon's 2023 is necessarily his future), and without the stuff to dream on fixing things or overpowering his shortcomings.

[Rcal10]

21 minutes ago, Bertz said:

Fun fact, Dan Szymborski's ZiPS projections have Imanaga as a better pitcher than Yamamoto on a per inning basis.

I've been beating the Imanaga drum almost all offseason.  I think every single mock I've done included him or Glasnow.  I'm still mostly feeling good about this offseason and have been rolling my eyes at the fanbases histrionics, but if Jed misses on Shota I think that's when I join the masses and start getting pretty nervous.

His major wart is he's given up a ton of dongs, but it seems to be a simple case of having a fastball that is better suited for the top of the zone than the bottom, while Japanese baseball is still mostly in its pound the knees / groundballs über alles phase. 

The velocity is not ideal given the other soft tossers we have, but then again every time push has come to shove Jed has backed off on that requirement.  Much in the same way that I keep saying I'm going to grow up and stop eating poptarts for breakfast every morning and then drop that resolution when I run into the slightest inconvenience.

I get not being overly concerned about the off season because a lot of what we expected the Cubs to do is still available. But feeling good  about the off season? That is a bit of a reach for me. I agree they still have a lot of guys they can get. Really the only guy gone that many thought they might get is Glasnow. I know Ohtani, Soto and even Yamamoto were guys some were hoping for, but those were all long shots, IMO. That said, I think the best I can say about what is happening so far is there isn’t a reason for concern. YET. There are still very real Cub targets available. But soon things need to start taking shape. 

[Maddux31]

8 hours ago, TomtheBombadil said:

He’s not even the most intriguing FA SP option right now! The one thing holding me back from a hard no is I like healthy well worked pitchers in general, but most definitely I prefer Snell esp if he’s being Actually Not That Good-ed down 

He’s not the best remaining option, for me that is Montgomery, but one big thing he has going for him is that he’s not represented by Boras like Snell and Montgomery, who will both likely get more money than the Cubs are willing to spend.

[Jason Ross]

9 hours ago, Transmogrified Tiger said:

 

This is really the thing for me.  Is he the good/prime version of Ryu, or are the HR systemic enough that he's more like the post-prime version of Ryu(or Maeda, to use another import).  If it's the former then I'm not overly cowed by the 9 figure contract, but if you aren't really sure then you're setting up risk of another FA SP that lands like Taillon did(though I don't think Taillon's 2023 is necessarily his future), and without the stuff to dream on fixing things or overpowering his shortcomings.

I think the HR's are pretty fixable. Looking through the articles on Imanaga out there, it appears that Bertz is correct, he throws a fastball that probably plays better up, too often down. As well, he throws it too often. I think the HR's are something that can be fixed with a pitch mix and a philosophy change. Throw the secondaries more, and try to make him into some version of the left-handed Kevin Gausman: a splitty nightmare who throws backwards.

[LBiittner]

I believe if Cubs were to get Imanaga, they'd almost assuredly do a 6ish man rotation. Steele and Imanaga both top out at 170 innings as their highest point ever reached. Likewise, Hendricks shouldn't be expected to top that limit. 

[Stratos]

You can watch him pitch in the WBC on youtube, his stuff is ok but nothing impressive.  Command seems good though.  Seems like a MORP, I like him less than Snell and Montgomery.

Edited January 5, 2024 by Stratos