Asked last week about his priorities during free agency, new Cubs pitcher Shota Imanaga didn’t mention location or history, although he’d been in Chicago — where his agency, Octagon, is based — since Dec. 26 and had researched the Cubs’ past.
“I wanted to be at a team where I, myself, along with the team, can continue to get better and grow,” Imanaga said through his interpreter at his introductory news conference. “And while going through that process, the Cubs seemed like a really good match.”
The Cubs have some ideas about how to make that mutual growth happen.
For them, signing Imanaga was the first step toward a productive offseason. For Imanaga, the first step will be adjusting to a new league and a new country — the process any player coming to MLB from Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball must go through.
“We have to project how [these players are] going to transition because it’s a different ball, those guys pitch on different schedules, and it’s different quality of competition,” explained Andrew Bassett, the Cubs’ vice president of pro scouting. “There’s a lot to factor in. But we were really impressed by [Imanaga’s] ability to make adjustments, to make adjustments with his pitch mix, and he did it while remaining one of the most dominant pitchers in Japan.”
Imanaga, a left-hander, led NPB’s Central League in strikeouts last year, even while tinkering with the shape of his splitter and mostly replacing his cutter with a slider. He also throws a curveball, two different changeups — a true changeup and a split change — a sinker and a four-seam fastball, which Bassett called “one of the better fastballs probably in the world.”
“It’s not just swing-and-miss, but also a ton of missed barrels, weak contact, high pop-up rates,” Bassett said. “It’s a pitch that we foresee transitioning really well in the major leagues.”
For fly-ball pitchers, high swing-and-miss rates sometimes come with high home-run rates. Imanaga gave up 17 homers in Central League play last season. But there are potential adjustments the Cubs can work with him to make.
“I’m really interested to talk to him about how he thought about using [his fastball] in Japan,” pitching coach Tommy Hottovy told the Sun-Times last weekend. “Because it looks to me like they pitch down a lot more than the potential of what I think he can do here. Also, understanding what he’s trying to do with the pitch and how he can continue to grow that. But with the movement and the approach angle, you’d imagine that to have good success up in the strike zone.”
The ball used in NPB is smaller and tackier, which can affect grips for specific pitches. Imanaga has used the MLB ball in offseason workouts, and he pitched well in last year’s World Baseball Classic despite the change. He said he’s “not concerned.”
Splitters tend to be more common in NPB than in MLB, although right-handed Cubs reliever Mark Leiter Jr. throws a splitter that has made him effective against left-handed batters as well as right-handers.
Imanaga’s splitter — especially rare for a lefty in MLB — has the potential to become his best secondary pitch, as long as he can get a good feel for it with the new ball and continue to develop it. He uses it to cut in on right-handed batters, Bassett said — the same direction as his fastball. But Imanaga tweaked it last season to have more north-south movement, dropping at the bottom of the strike zone.
“He’s known as ‘The [Throwing] Philosopher,’ ” Hottovy said. “So it’s going to be really fun to get to know him and learn what makes him tick and what he values, and how we can continue to help him grow, and what he wants to learn.”
The Cubs are now poised to have “The Throwing Philosopher” and “The Professor,” veteran right-hander Kyle Hendricks, in the same rotation.
“Philosopher — that’s way above a professor in my eyes,” Hendricks said. “So I’ve got to pick his brain.”
Imanaga is more humble.
“I am by no means a finished product, and there’s a lot for me to learn, and there’s a lot for me to study day in and day out,” he said. “And I believe that my approach in that way somehow earned me the nickname.”
