Back in the offseason, one Japanese player was stealing all the headlines, Yoshinobu Yamamoto. He was the one that everyone in baseball media was talking about and had many teams in a bidding war. However lost in this shuffle was another star Japanese pitcher, Shota Imanaga. He may not have been as dominant as Yamamoto, but in seven seasons Imanaga was a respectable pitcher. He pitched to a 3.18 in 1002.2 innings with 1,021 strikeouts.
Those career numbers were good enough to earn him a four-year, 53-million-dollar contract with the Chicago Cubs. So far, this looks like the deal of the offseason for the Cubbies. Imanaga is off to a hot start in his big league career and looks like he’ll be a main piece of the Cubs rotation for years to come. But the question remains, will Imanaga be able to keep it up all season?
How Imanaga Has Done So Far
As mentioned before, Imanaga’s MLB career is off to a great start. He’s made three starts and has pitched 15.1 innings with 16 strikeouts to only two walks, and a WHIP of 0.77. However the most impressive stat of all he has yet to give up an earned run, He did give up a run in his start against the Dodgers, however it was an unearned run, so the streak continues.
This is a start to a pitcher career Chicago hasn’t seen in a while. The last Cubs pitcher to go his three starts of not giving up an earned run was Ed Reulbach back in 1905. The Titanic sinking used to be a more recent event than a Cubs pitcher doing what Imanaga just did. He has outperformed every expectation and projection people had placed on him.
The reason why Imanaga has been so dominant is the success of his fastball. Opponents have a batting average of .075 and a slugging percentage of .075. Plus if you look at his advanced numbers like expected batting average and expected slugging percentage all show that this isn’t luck. Opposing batters just are unable to hit his fastball and get good contact on it.
Will He Keep This Up?
While Imanaga is currently having a historic start to his MLB career, the main question is, will the success continue? Now obviously he’s not gonna go the entire season without giving up a run, but will he continue to be the ace of the Cubs staff? Or will he come back to earth and settle more into what people expected him to be?
Well, that’s where stats like xFIP come into play. What the stat does is try to predict what the pitcher era is going to be in the future. It takes several different stats and scenarios into account to try and get the most accurate number. Imanaga has an xFIP of 3.06. This means that his era is expected to go up, however not to a level where he’s bad. Not only that but according to Baseball Savants xERA, (similar to xFIP) he’s in the 74 percentile. What all the projections show is that Imanaga is not lucky, and this is how dominant he can truly be.
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