MINNEAPOLIS -- It wasn’t quite the outcome that Tatsuya Imai and the Astros were hoping for. But in the Astros’ rain-delayed 6-3 loss to the Twins on Monday, Imai demonstrated improvement in a couple of key areas that have tripped him up early in his Astros career.
Imai pitched 4 2/3 innings, allowing three runs on four hits. Twins center fielder James Outman had just hit a two-out single in the fifth when the game was suspended for an hour and 57 minutes due to a downpour at Target Field.
The most important number of the night, and one that should please Imai and manager Joe Espada, is zero. That’s the number of walks he issued to the Twins. Imai entered the game with the second-worst walks-per-innings-pitched ratio in the Major Leagues. At 9.95 BB/9, only his teammate Bryan Abreu (10.8 BB/9) has been wilder this year among qualified pitchers.
In his most recent start, when Imani returned from a month-long stint on the IL due to arm fatigue, the 28-year-old right-hander walked three Mariners batters and hit two others. Four of those five batters came around to score in a 10-2 loss.
But after walking 14 of the first 48 batters he faced in his first season with the Astros, Imai walked none of the 18 Twins he faced on Monday.
“In the outing before this, I was leaning too much whenever I was in my motion,” Imai said through an interpreter. “But for today's outing, I was able to put my glove arm higher so that I wouldn’t lean forward as much as I did in the last few outings. … I was able to put my glove arm higher so that I was able to control my body well, and I really felt good with it. I was able to put it in the zone better.”
Imai wasn’t just in the strike zone – he was effective in and out of it. In 74 pitches, he got 19 whiffs on 44 swings, including 15 on a slider that the Twins chased in the dirt throughout his outing.
“A lot better than his previous start,” Espada said. “I thought the slider was much better, blended really well with his changeup [and] fastball. Way more aggressive in the zone. I thought his stuff played really, really well today.”
And after relying exclusively on his sinker and slider in his first post-IL start against the Mariners, Imai began mixing in a few changeups to the Twins. He threw four in all, and he even induced a whiff on one of them. But there’s one changeup he’d definitely like to do over again if he could.
Imai retired the first four batters before he faced veteran slugger Josh Bell with one out in the second. After taking two four-seamers – one for a strike and one for a ball – Bell ripped a changeup to straightaway center. It landed 429 feet away from home plate for Bell’s first home run since April 9.
When asked if he’d go back to the changeup more often going forward, Imai was a bit cagy with his response.
“I got homered by that changeup, and then I realized that other than the two pitches, fastball and slider, I don't have any skills,” he said.
Maybe it was just Bell’s day. The next time he came to the plate, there was a runner on second with two outs in the fourth. This time, Imai fed him a steady diet of four-seamers. Imai was one pitch away from getting out of the jam when Bell went up and got a high fastball above the zone and drove it out of the park to left field.
By the end of the night, Imai was already looking forward to his next start – which Espada confirmed he will make. In fact, it was clear he would have liked to have pitched longer if not for the rain delay.
“I felt really good today coming into today's game,” Imai said. “I wanted to throw more, but it's just what it is. So for next outing, I'll be more confident and just try to help out the team.”