Shota Imanaga came to Major League Baseball with an impressive resume in Japan, a World Baseball Classic and the nickname “Throwing Philosopher” because of his commitment to his craft.
But for all his knowledge and all his experience, Imanaga’s success this season stemmed from trimming things down.
“That’s the greatness of Shota is that it’s not different,” manager Craig Counsell said. “I still think the best thing and the genius in Shota this year is that he actually came here and simplified who he was.”
This was an established pitcher in Japan, one with a 7-pitch arsenal that led to a 3.18 ERA during a successful 8-year career. It would have been easy to come over and use that catalog of pitches to stymie the world’s best hitters.
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Instead, Imanaga relied heavily on a two-pitch mix, his four-seam fastball with his splitter using the velocity in the top of the zone and the drop of the splitfinger pitch lower in the zone to keep hitters off balance. He threw the fastball 52% of the time this season and the splitter 30.6% of the time.
Imanaga had a 2.91 ERA and a 1.02 WHIP in 173.1 innings, serving as the Cubs ace this season. They were 23-6 in starts by Imanaga in 2024.
It was a basic — and yet — devastating approach that produced dominance.
“He actually made himself simpler,” Counsell said. “And there’s real genius in that, I think. And that was my kind of favorite thing about him is just watching him simplify things and get better.
“In a place where he had to have a lot of new things and different things thrown at him, most of us kind of make things more complicated in those situations. He made things simpler, and I think that was at the root of a lot of his success.”
It seems like an easy thing to do or practice — hey, just use your best pitches all the time and success will come. But in Major League Baseball, that doesn’t always work. The league adjusts to trends quickly and what may work one start, isn’t guaranteed to work 3 starts later or even the next time out.
“That is not an easy thing to do — a guy who’s coming from Japan to now pitching in the big leagues and is going to condense his repertoire,” pitching coach Tommy Hottovy said. “Most guys want to try to do more, but he did a fantastic job of that.”
Beyond the skill change, the data available to MLB players makes Imanaga’s success with a simple approach even more incredible. Hottovy and the pitching staff worked with Imanaga and his interpreter, Edwin Stanberry, to dissect all the data into manageable information.
“Edwin’s kind of an unsung hero that we don’t talk about enough,” Hottovy said. “And I think the combination of him and Shota together, the relationship they have, just allows for freer flowing information. And I think Edwin does such a good job of translating concepts, not maybe even like what exactly word-for-word I’m saying, which is great because that means he’s got some feel of like how he wants to get the message across.”
Stanberry’s background helps in that. He was a catcher in college at Division II Hawai’i-Hilo.
“I think it’s just, from my experience, watching pitchers and just even with the tech, like TrackMan and stuff, understand the data,” Stanberry said. “I got to learn more about it this year, but I think just understanding it and — just kind of like him — simplifying the concept and then just translating that to him so he understands it instead of just, this is a bunch of data.
“I think that helps a lot because now you have context behind him versus just what they’re saying.”
That creates a very strong foundation for 2025 for Imanaga and the Cubs. He’ll enter next season as part of a stout rotation nucleus that includes Justin Steele, Jameson Taillon and Javier Assad.
But don’t expect a heavy deviance from what’s worked.
“I don’t really see a point in making stuff complicated,” Imanaga said through Stanberry. “I think the simpler the better. So I think even next year, keep it simpler.”
