Shōta Imanaga Showcases Splitter, Fastball in Debut Shutout
The Rockies don’t stand much of a chance this season and they can’t hold a candle to the defending world champs, but they’ve got a dangerous bat or three and can make pitchers pay for mistakes. Good thing Shōta Imanaga made very few of them in his MLB debut on a day in which he didn’t need much help from weather conditions that would have otherwise dampened Colorado’s bats.
A day after fellow lefty Jordan Wicks got 19 swings and misses on 85 pitches, Imanage got 20 whiffs on 92 pitches. It’s comparing apples to elephants to look at the disparate lineups and pitching approaches, though, as these two are very different starters. The same is true for Justin Steele, who looked good in his debut before a hamstring injury forced an early exit.
Though they all throw with the wrong hand and do so with very similar fastball velocity, they operate with very different strategies that more or less make handedness a moot point. Steele really only has two pitches on paper, but he effectively has five when you consider the cut-ride fastball and a slider that he can manipulate to be a cutter or sweeper as well. Wicks is known for the changeup, but he got 11 of his whiffs Sunday out of 34 four-seams.
Imanaga, on the other hand (pun sort of intended), got just five swings and misses on his much-hyped heater despite throwing it 56 times in the home opener. Ah, but things get really fun when we look at its other results and how it set up his devastating splitter. First, the offspeed. Imanaga threw 24 splitters, all but two of which were to right-handed hitters. The Rockies whiffed on 12 of those and made contact with just three, putting two in play.
Kris Bryant was the only Colorado hitter to get a bat on more than one splitter, fouling one off and lining to Christopher Morel for what should have been an out in the 2nd inning. At around 102 mph off the bat, KB at least squared it up. Brendan Rodgers went down and got one to break up Imanaga’s no-hit bid with one out in the 6th, a notable feat considering the southpaw had just thrown a splitter in the dirt.
As noted above, much of the splitter’s effectiveness came from the way Imanaga kept his opponents off balance with the fastball. Though he got only a handful of whiffs, he generated a whopping 19 foul balls with the four-seam. You could dig into that number and see that seven of those came against Ryan McMahon, but I think it’s even more notable that the at-bat ended in a strikeout with one of those two lefty-lefty splitters Imanaga threw.
The other: A ball in the dirt that preceded six of those seven fouled-off fastballs. It was a wonderfully executed battle from both sides, all things considered, but the better player came out on top.
Imanaga’s primary weapon of choice against left-handed hitters was the sweeper, which he threw 10 times for three whiffs. We may see that one more frequently in the future based on matchups, especially as the temperatures rise to the point where feel becomes less of an issue. The curve should probably factor more than the 2% we saw on Monday as well.
That’s what I’m very much looking forward to as the season progresses, how Imanaga’s repertoire shakes out as he continues to learn how to attack MLB hitters. Like Steele — and Wicks to an extent, but Steele in particular — Imanaga doesn’t get by on pure stuff. Or maybe that’s unfair to say because being able to keep hitters guessing by mixing pitches and locating properly is just as important as more quantifiable metrics.
No one’s going to laud Imanaga’s average fastball spin rate of just under 2,400 RPMs, a mark that wouldn’t have cracked the top 100 among qualified pitchers last year. His sweeper at around 2,450 puts him in nearly the same spot. But when paired with a splitter that kills roughly nine ticks and nearly 60% of his fastball spin, putting him among the bottom 15 or so for splitter spin rate, Imanaga will be able to pull hitter’s strings like marionettes.
We know he can’t spearhead a shutout with nine strikeouts and no walks every time he takes the mound, especially as warmer weather works against him this summer, but I believe we’re going to have a lot of fun watching Imanaga with the Cubs. The opposite is true for the other teams that have to face him knowing they could have signed him for more than the Cubs did while still getting a bargain relative to his projected price tag.