Hitters Swing More Against Shota Imanaga Than Any Other Pitcher in MLB. Why?

[Matthew Trueblood]

The savvy southpaw's first Stateside summer has seen some ups and downs. Hitters see his stuff coming and swing wildly--although with very mixed results.

Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

It's easy to miss just how roughly big-league batters have treated Shota Imanaga lately. Because he put up such gaudy numbers prior to his first rough start at the end of May, his full-season stats still look good. Since May 29, Imanaga has made 15 starts, and while he's struck out 82 batters and walked just 13, he's also surrendered 19 home runs.

Imanaga's ERA over that span is 4.47. His last start that didn't include surrendering a home run came Jul. 10 in Baltimore. This weekend, in nearby Washington, D.C., he'll try to demonstrate anew the abikity to keep the ball in the park.

Simply put, the league has adjusted to Imanaga. That hasn't rendered him a bad pitcher, but he's been more like Jameson Taillon than Justin Steele. He's a control artist, right now, capable of missing some bats but not of avoiding the occasional ambush. Hitters have learned what to expect from him, and they're going to the plate ready to swing the bats.

It's one thing to be a pitcher who fills up the zone and forces opponents to swing. It's quite another to be literally the pitcher against whom batters swing most often. That's probably not a good thing, in Imanaga's case. He throws too many flat-VAA fastballs, tough to square up but a boon to hitters when they do; and too many splitters, which miss bats like crazy when well-executed but have a higher error rate in terms of movement and location than most sliders or curveballs would.

He's been a subtle, perpetual, and assiduous tinkerer, but Imanaga has stuck pretty closely to those two pitches this year. They're his bread and butter, and he insists upon being able to trust and lean on them. It's made him deleteriously predictable, though--or at least, it's made things too easy on the opponent, because they can craft a swing that handles both the fastball and the splitter.

Familiarity has also caused trouble for Imanaga. Even as he's begun to diversify his arsenal, he's also begun seeing teams a second or third team within the season. Hitters have made adjustments upon getting an extra look at him, and not just from start to start. Here's a chart showing the times through the order penalty for all pitchers with at least 15 starts this year, with the increase in batters' production from the first to the second trip through the order on the x-axis and that from the second to the third time through on the y-axis.

The extra lines on the grid are the league average for each stat, so players (like Steele) in the lower right quadrant suffer more the second time through, relative to their peers, but less the third time. Imanaga is in the upper right portion, seeing a greater loss of effectiveness with both turns of the lineup card than an average starter.

Some of that might be management of fatigue, as he's spent the season adapting to a new schedule and pitching on a shorter average rotation than he did while he toiled in Japan. However, if you've watched Imanaga pitch this year, you know it also feels like the hitters are just seeing him better and more ready to combat that splitter as games unfold. His next adjustment needs to be bolder implementation of one of his tertiary weapons, to keep hitters a bit more off-balance and make them swing with less frequency or confidence after the first time through the order.

Those adjustments will wait, at least in part, until the winter. The Philosopher and his coaching staff will need time to digest and reflect on his first year with the Cubs, and they can more readily make sweeping, baseline gameplan changes heading into spring training. However, some of it needs to start now. Remote though their chances are, the Cubs have some semblance of hope to climb back into the NL playoff hunt. Since one of their top priorities this September should be the development and further preparation of Imanaga for 2025, anyway, the team should be working with him to alter the plan of attack right away.

Imanaga's not a true-talent 4.47 ERA pitcher. Then again, neither is he the guy whose ERA stayed south of 1.00 for two solid months to open the season. Down the stretch, the Cubs need him to find a productive place between those two figures, informed by the need to get hitters a little less trigger-happy when they step into the box--particularly in the middle and late innings. If they can get something more akin to April and May Imanaga over his final half-dozen starts of the season, they'll enjoy both improved chances to make something of this desperate season and greater confidence about their rotation picture heading into the offseason.

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[Stratos]

Throws strikes?  And out-pitches start in the strikezone too?

Edited August 30, 2024 by Stratos

[Stratos]

Just saw that he has thrown 81 curveballs this year and generated zero whiffs on them.