NEWSLETTER
A rough one was coming at some point for Shōta Imanaga. This league is just too good for anyone to post a sub-1 ERA all year, and we also knew that Imanaga’s profile was going to yield some loud contact in the air when he wasn’t executing his pitches as well as he has been.
You could tell Imanaga wasn’t as sharp as usual not only from the Brewers’ run-scoring results, but also from his pitch locations, reduced movement, the extreme volume of foul balls the Brewers were hitting (21 out of 81 pitches), and the almost total lack of whiffs (just 6). Imanaga’s 19% CSW – that’s the rate of called strikes and swinging strikes – was especially poor, and is likely reflective of how well the Brewers were seeing him.
For his part, Imanaga’s instinct was to apologize to his manager for the outing:
Not that Counsell would feel an apology(!) was necessary. Shōta Imanaga has been good – historically good – until last night, so nobody’s going to rip him for the game, much less his manager:
As Counsell noted, Imanaga just wasn’t as sharp in his pitch execution as he has been, and the Brewers didn’t miss the mistakes he made. Some days you won’t be sharp and you’ll nevertheless get away with it. Last night was not one of those situations.
By the way, Imanaga said that whatever happened was not related to his recently skipped start and accumulated rust.
“It was good for recovery,” Imanaga said through translator Edwin Stanberry, per Cubs.com. “I got my training in and I felt good. I think there wasn’t really an issue with that. I felt really recovered.”
For now, I’m pretty comfortable casting this off as a these-outings-are-going-to-happen-sometimes situation. Now, Imanaga gets his first opportunity to work following a blow-up start, and figure out how to make sure it doesn’t happen the next time out.
