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The Cubs certainly hope they can find and acquire a solid starting pitcher to supplement their rotation before the trade deadline arrives on July 31. For now, though, Shota Imanaga is their unquestioned ace, and they missed him dearly during his nearly two-month stint on the injured list. Happily, they welcomed him back Thursday, and he fired five shutout innings against the potent Cardinals offense, handing off a 2-0 lead to the bullpen.
Early in the outing, Imanaga was extremely fastball-heavy, trying hard to establish that pitch and force hitters to sit on it. By the end of it, though, he'd done what he usually does: gradually increase splitter usage, sprinkle in the sweeper against lefties, and mix his stuff well enough to keep hitters off-balance and frustrated. Of his 77 pitches, Statcast read 12 as splitters, 11 as changeups, and 6 as sweepers. It can be hard to distinguish the multiple flavors of offspeed pitch Imanaga throws in real time, but he certainly did deploy both his signature splitter and the more traditional change throughout the outing.
This wasn't Imanaga's best day, in terms of sheer stuff, but nothing in that regard raised a red flag, and for this one start, that's all the Cubs asked. He allowed just one hit and one walk, and he struck out three. He got seven whiffs, forced lots of mishit balls with his heater, and induced weak contact across the board. His fastball only sat around 90.5 miles per hour, but he touched 92, proving his arm is back up to speed.
It was particularly fun to watch Imanaga work opposite Cardinals starter Andre Pallante, who has exceptional fastball movement characteristics, just as Imanaga does—but in the opposite way.
Pallante's unusually high arm angle and funky, catapult-like delivery yields a heavy heater with lots of relative cut. Imanaga's rising heater not only comes at hitters on a singularly flat vertical plane, but runs more to the arm side than almost any fastball otherwise similar to it. The contrasting styles made for an interesting early pitcher's duel.
That the Cubs had the advantage in the bout when each fighter retired is a credit, in part, to Michael Busch, who worked a superb at-bat against Pallante and hit a 3-2 fastball out of the park to right field, putting the Cubs on the board first.
A long Cubs rally in the fourth failed to produce a crooked number, but a bases-loaded walk from Ian Happ did double their cushion. The Cubs are in position to escape St. Louis with a split after dropping the first two games of the series, and with Imanaga's return in the center of the narrative there, that's cause for extra optimism.
Join our game thread, below, to talk more about Thursday's action.
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