On the heels of a strong 2025 season in which the Cubs won 92 games, defeated the Padres in the three-game Wild Card Series and lost in five games in the NLDS against the division-rival Brewers, Chicago has been one of the most active teams this offseason.
Netting Alex Bregman on a five-year, $175 million contract was the club’s headliner, but the Cubs have also traded for starter Edward Cabrera, signed five free-agent relievers and welcomed Shota Imanaga back after the left-hander accepted his qualifying offer.
The Cubs first declined a three-year, $57.75 million club option for Imanaga, prompting the lefty to accept the subsequent qualifying offer he received from the club. After an excellent rookie season with the Cubs in 2024 (2.91 ERA and 174 strikeouts in 173 1/3 innings), Imanaga experienced an up-and-down ‘25 campaign.
After running a 2.65 first-half ERA (albeit with a 4.58 FIP), Imanaga struggled to the tune of a 4.70 ERA in the second half in 2025. Imanaga, who pitched like a frontline starter in 2024 -- the lefty was an All-Star and finished fifth in NL Cy Young Award voting -- is an integral bounceback candidate who could help the Cubs win their first division title since 2020.
Here are three keys to an Imanaga bounceback.
Keep fewer balls out of the air
The reality is that Imanaga has been a flyball-heavy pitcher dating back to his days in Japan. Expecting a huge overhaul in this department isn’t likely given his profile as an undersized lefty who features plenty of elevated heaters.
Since debuting in 2024, Imanaga boasts the highest flyball rate (36.0 percent) among 139 pitchers that have allowed at least 500 batted balls. A whopping 66.1 percent of his batted balls have been in the air (flyballs, line drives or pop-ups), the eighth-highest mark. And, perhaps most importantly, 24.2 percent of those batted balls have been pulled in the air, the third-highest rate.
Why are more pulled balls in the air bad for pitchers? Of any subset of batted balls and direction, pulled batted balls are the worst outcome for pitchers. In 2025, pulled batted balls produced a collective .544/.537/1.219 slash line across the league.
Imanaga was a heavy flyball pitcher in 2024 but that profile went even more extreme in ‘25.
Imanaga in 2024 vs. 2025
Flyball rate: 32.9% vs. 39.5%
Airball rate: 62.8% vs. 70.0%
Pulled-air rate: 22.5% vs. 26.2%
Groundball rate: 37.2% vs. 30.0%
In 2024, Imanaga allowed 27 home runs in 173 1/3 innings. Last season, Imanaga allowed 31 homers, despite him throwing nearly 30 fewer innings (144 2/3 innings). That included 20 home runs in the second half last season after allowing 11 in the first half.
Generating more whiffs
Imanaga’s issue with home runs was an even bigger problem since he was missing fewer bats in the process.
In 2024, Imanaga struck out roughly a batter per inning. On an inning-per-inning basis, few starters were generating as many strikeouts as the Cubs lefty. That was not the case last season.
Imanaga in 2024 vs. 2025
Strikeout rate: 25.1% (67th percentile) vs. 20.6% (34th percentile)
Whiff rate: 28.3% (72nd percentile) vs. 24.6% (44th percentile)
Again, that type of drop-off in strikeouts is going to hurt any pitcher, but it was an even bigger issue for someone with Imanaga’s profile. Because Imanaga was missing fewer bats and allowing worse overall contact, the negative impact was twofold for the left-hander.
Interestingly enough, Imanaga both improved his strikeout rate in the second half (from 18.2 percent to 22.8 percent) along with his walk rate (6.1 percent to 3.3 percent). However, those improvements also came with an inflated 2.35 HR/9 in the second half, compared to 1.46 in the first half.
Getting his 2024 fastball back
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Imanaga saw his fastball velocity drop from 91.7 mph in 2024 to 90.8 mph in ‘25. A 0.9 mph difference in fastball velo might not seem like much but when you already operate on the lower end of velocity for pitchers, that decline can be even more problematic.
In 2024, Imanaga allowed 22 home runs and a .471 SLG in 353 plate appearances that ended in four-seamers. Last season, Imanaga allowed 24 home runs and a .567 SLG in 262 plate appearances ending on four-seam fastballs. Those 24 home runs were far and away the most homers allowed by any pitcher on a single pitch type in 2025 -- Jacob deGrom, Freddy Peralta and Joe Ryan were next up with 16 home runs allowed on four-seamers.
When Imanaga was sitting closer to 92 mph with good ride on his fastball and throwing an excellent splitter and sweeper, he was a much tougher pitcher to face. When that fastball creeped closer to 90 mph, it became that much easier for opposing hitters to focus in on that pitch and do damage. It’s possible the loss in fastball velocity also had an adverse effect on his splitter, which suffered a 10 percent drop in whiff rate last year (43.0 percent in 2024, 32.4 percent in 2025).
Imanaga isn’t that far removed from producing as one of the top pitchers in baseball and even with his struggles in 2025, it’s feasible to expect some kind of bounceback for the lefty. The Cubs are sure counting on it as they try to dethrone the Brewers at the top of the NL Central.