Is Shota Imanaga back?

2024 seems like a long time ago. But for me, and many other Cubs fans, Shota Imanaga was a revalation that year. We all wanted Ohtani or Yamamoto in that offseason (for good reason), but when the Dodgers gave him a mega-deal, Imanaga was the guy that was within the Cubs price range.

But Imanaga turned out to be a revelation. He had a 2.91 ERA and 1.02 WHIP over 173 innings, and led the league with a 6.21 strikes to walks ration. It didn’t hurt that his record was 15 and 3, which was partially due to the run support he received.

Well, we are only 4 starts into 2026, but it appears that the ’24 version of Shota Imanaga is back. His ERA is 2.45, whip is 0.73 and SO/BB is 6.20. He broke his streak of giving up home runs in 12 straight appearances, not allowing home runs in 2 games in a row. And although he did surrender a homer to the leadoff man last night, he gave up almost nothing for the rest of his start. If you take away the fluky 3-run homer he gave up in his first outing, he would have given up only 3 earned runs over 22 innings.

I won’t try to dig into the advanced metrics of his pitches, as I’m sure there are more qualified people to do that. But there are two things that really stand out:

1. His velocity is much improved over what we saw in the 2nd half of 2025. His fastball is averaging 92.1 mph in 2026, and it was hovering at 90 mph at the end of last season.
2. The OPS against his fastball was .855 in 2025 and it is currently at .461 this season.

One thing I noticed last night was that Imanaga was able to stay away from the middle of the plate on almost all of the hitters. But the Phillies did not do damage on his poorly located pitchers – with the exception of the first batter. All the rest of these mistakes were hit at someone or fouled off.

He got his worst pitch of the night out of the way early, a home run given up to Turner on a fastball on the inner half:

But he was able to get aways with several other pitchers that were middle-middle. Here are two pitches to Realmuto that were fouled off before he got a strikout on a high fastball:

He got away with one to Alec Bohm, who flew out on a sinker that was almost in the smae spot as Turner’s home run

In the 3rd, Otto Kemp could only foul off a sinker down the middle

In the 4th, Edmundo Sosa, whiffed on a sinker that was almost middle-middle

Alec Bohm hit the ball very hard, t grounded out to 2nd on a sinker that was in the middle vertically, but on the outer quadrant of the strike zone in the 5th.

Adolis Garcia lined out sharply to right on this fastball that was just above the middle of the plate.

Here is a chart showing where his pitches landed last night:

And here’s what we saw on 2024, which was very similar, except for few pitches below the zone.

In 2025, what we saw were more elevated pitches, especially on the inner and outer third. But nothing from a location perspective that would signify a major issue, when compared to 2024 or 2026.

Ultimately, it does look like velocity is the key for Imanaga.

With Cade Horton out for the season, and Justin Steele not returning until June, it is absolutely critical that Imanaga continue his hot start.