How Chicago Cubs, lefty plan to tweak arsenal

MESA, Ariz. — There was a real possibility that Shota Imanaga’s final moments in a Chicago Cubs uniform would be heartbreaking.

Imanaga had to watch the Milwaukee Brewers’ victory celebration from the bullpen at American Family Field, with the season ending without a chance to play in the deciding Game 5 of the National League Division Series. His complicated contract situation added a layer of uncertainty in the offseason. Imanaga, hit by a left hamstring strain that cost him seven weeks during the regular season and left his mechanics out of control, wasn’t guaranteed to be back and have a chance to redeem a poor start in Game 2 of the NLDS.

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Everything ultimately worked out for both parties when Imanaga accepted the Cubs’ qualifying offer rather than rejecting it to seek a multi-year contract with another major league team. He enters spring training with a clear vision of what needs to change this season.

“There wasn’t really a lot of discomfort,” Imanaga said Thursday of his offseason through interpreter Edwin Stanberry. “I focused on, OK, what do I need to do, what do I need to practice, and then I just focused on that. … I felt like I made the best choice in talking with my agent, obviously with a one-year deal versus a multi-year deal for me, you have to look at it one year at a time and do what you can for the team and do your best every year.”

The Cubs are excited to have Imanaga back.

“I’m very happy that Shota is having an outstanding season,” said manager Craig Counsell. “He’s going to respond to things that happened at the end of the year, and he wasn’t happy with the way he pitched. That’s what great competitors do, they react to things like that. And he absolutely will respond, I’m very confident of that.”

Imanaga’s determination to put an inconsistent 2025 season behind him has the 32-year-old prioritizing remaining on the team for spring training over competing in the World Baseball Classic again. Japan team manager Hirokazu Ibata said through an interpreter in December that he would be “obviously disappointed” if Imanaga chose not to pitch for his country.

“I talk to everyone around me, to get everyone’s opinion, we thought it would probably be best to make our own adjustments and practice here in Arizona,” Imanaga said of his decision.

How Imanaga and the Cubs make him look more like the version who posted a 2.91 ERA over 173 1/3 innings in 29 starts in his first season in 2024 has been a focal point in recent months. The Cubs believe Imanaga was close in the second half to regaining the type of command and efficiency he showed the previous season, but those minor adjustments became different to exploit while also being in competition mode each time he took the mound.

“He wanted more, he thinks there’s more in there, there’s more to prove, and you can see the way he’s coming into spring training that he feels that way,” pitching coach Tommy Hottovy said, “because he’s in a really good place compared to where he was at the end of last year.”

Imanaga spent the offseason rebuilding his lower body strength, which had never fully returned following the hamstring injury he suffered in early May. Good control usually comes from consistent pitch shapes, which can be affected by lower body conditions, Hottovy noted. So when Imanaga didn’t have the fastball shape he wanted in the second half, he kept looking for it. This required changing delivery signals and his lines of sight, and the adjustment did not happen quickly.

The injury affected Imanaga’s driving leg during her delivery, creating a lack of stability and even confidence in her movements.

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“You might sit a little deeper because you don’t want to overextend the hamstring and that might actually feel like you’re creating more force, but in reality you’re creating it to get out of it faster instead of holding it on the mound,” Hottovy explained. “And I think for him, his delivery has a lot of depth in terms of how he gets into his back leg, but his strength comes from holding that position and then turning hard late.

“He had to affect the way he turned, which then affected the trajectory of his arm, and he knew he was trying to raise the trajectory of his arm a little bit and elevate the release point of his arm a little bit, but he just couldn’t do it, and he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t able to support his core that way.”

With an offseason of work to correct these issues behind him, Imanaga’s next step during camp is to perfect his pitch mix with a three-pronged approach: refining his sweeper, refining his lead grip and reintegrating the cutter into his pitch mix.