Imanaga’s Bad Day, Swanson Precaution, Hodge, Grimace, Minors, and Other Cubs Bullets

Jun 22, 2024

Taking The Little Boy to the zoo this morning before it gets blistering hot again. He mostly just wants the Dippin’ Dots, but I’m hoping to make friends with a chimp.

Rough, rough day for Shōta Imanaga: 3.0 IP, 10 ER, 11 H, 1 BB, 3 HR. Hopefully that’s as bad as it gets, and that it’s an infrequent thing. The homers are going to happen sometimes as part of his game, but that was him getting quite a bit more wrecked than JUST giving up a few homers.

The good news is that Imanaga says his velocity being down yesterday was intentional – he was trying to keep the intensity in check early so he could pitch deeper in the game and have more left in the tank later (Sun-Times). “It’s more lowering the output — like, the intensity — so throughout the game I can maintain it. Moving forward, I just need to make an adjustment on how I do that, then I should be good. It’s almost like a game of tag. They’ll [hitters] go forward a little bit and make an adjustment, then I have to make an adjustment.”

The less good, obviously, is that Imanaga got hammered by the Mets. They’ve been blistering hot for a while. Still, he wasn’t locating the four-seamer where he wanted and because the Mets were all over it, he had to use the splitter far too much, and thus couldn’t get chase on his splitters out of the zone, and his splitters that stayed in the zone got hit. A single start is obviously a tiny sample for batted ball data, so I’m not offering it as a predictive measure, just as a comment on how bad things were yesterday: 64.7% hard hit rate, and a 35.3% barrel rate. Good gravy. Yikes.

When Miles Mastrobuoni pinch hit for Dansby Swanson in the 7th inning yesterday, I thought it was primarily just a “game is out of hand” situation. I guess Swanson was feeling something, and that was a factor:

“Just cautionary … we’re pretty optimistic.”

Craig Counsell on Dansby Swanson leaving the game. pic.twitter.com/dbAINooiVv
— Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) June 21, 2024

I guess we’ll see soon enough. Not like the Cubs need another guy playing through an injury (as Swanson, himself, did earlier this year).

When the top highlight from a game is a pretty decent fan catch, you know it was not a great day:

But hey, Porter Hodge striking out five over 2.1 innings (albeit low-leverage) was also pretty good:

I tentatively expect that Hodge will go back down to Iowa when Keegan Thompson returns from the paternity list (as soon as today), but this is potentially turning into a pretty incredible development year for Hodge. Yes, you want him impacting the 2024 team, but if he could at least come out of this season with some things to work on this offseason to set him up to potentially be a key part of the 2025 bullpen (he has that caliber of stuff), then that would be an excellent outcome.

Thoughts on the continued offensive depression in baseball:

“As a fan, you don’t want to come to the game and just watch guys get mowed down for nine straight innings."

New from me & @enosarris

Offense has sunk to near historic lows. We looked at all the reasons – with great input from the hitters.https://t.co/b1G2FJWsU7— Jayson Stark (@jaysonst) June 21, 2024

On the flip side, Royce Lewis doesn’t understand any of the complaining about offense:

10 homers
16 games

Royce Lewis, you are out of this world 🔥 pic.twitter.com/A9tqf5rkkA
— MLB (@MLB) June 22, 2024

That is a bonkers amount of pitches:

Blue Jays are the first team to throw 70 pitches in a single inning since the Tigers on August 22, 2014
— Sportsnet Stats (@SNstats) June 22, 2024

Forgetting how many outs there are to lose a game:

This is how the #WhiteSox lost (local TV call)

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME pic.twitter.com/FoH68bBQL3
— Herb Lawrence (@Ecnerwal23) June 22, 2024

Cubs need to get the Hamburglar on a plane to Wrigley ASAP:

Mets pre-Grimace:

28-37
-35 run differential

Since:

8-1
+38 run differential pic.twitter.com/MbcWozpmik
— Underdog MLB (@Underdog__MLB) June 21, 2024

Christian Franklin, still boppin’:

Christian Franklin LAUNCHES this ball to tie the game back up at 2! @CF13_ #LastYearBestYear #NextStopWrigley #YouHaveToSeeIt pic.twitter.com/bIYZA3XahA
— Tennessee Smokies (@smokiesbaseball) June 22, 2024

With Moises Ballesteros behind the plate, as he is clearly the pitcher whisperer:

Six shutout innings from Dan Straily tonight for the @IowaCubs as they still lead 2-0.

First time for Straily with a line of 6 IP/0 ER since 7/17/22.

He has a 3.00 ERA over his last five starts and hasn't allowed more than 2 ER in any of them.— Alex Cohen (@voiceofcohen2) June 22, 2024

written by

Brett Taylor

Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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