This story was excerpted from Jordan Bastian’s Cubs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
CHICAGO -- Not long after news spread internally that Shota Imanaga had decided to stay with the Cubs for at least one more season, pitching coach Tommy Hottovy fired off a text message to the left-handed pitcher.
“I was pumped,” Hottovy said in a phone conversation this week. “I texted a GIF of him, fist-pumping coming off the mound. And he responded pretty quickly. He was like, ‘This is where I want to be. I’m excited to be back. I’m ready to work.’”
Imanaga made the decision on Tuesday to accept the one-year, qualifying offer ($22.025 million) extended by the Cubs to stick around for ‘26, bringing an end to a complicated contract saga and skipping the uncertainty of free agency. It also gives the pitcher a chance to rewrite what would have been a sour ending to an otherwise stellar two-year run in Chicago.
The Cubs were knocked out of the playoffs by the rival Brewers in the National League Division Series, and Imanaga’s struggles with allowing home runs had persisted into October. Even with a depleted staff, manager Craig Counsell was careful with how and when he used Imanaga in the playoffs. That included not using the pitcher at all in the decisive Game 5 in Milwaukee.
The offseason now offers a clean slate of sorts for both Imanaga and the Cubs.
“It was just going to be a matter of time where he felt like he turned a corner,” Hottovy said. “And I think we were really close. I think we just ran out of time with the season. … He understands that he’s still got some stuff left on the table that he wants to continue to get better with. That’s exciting for us.”
Imanaga was an All-Star in his first year with the Cubs in ‘24, when he started a combined no-hitter and received down-ballot consideration for both the NL Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards. Last season, the 32-year-old lefty took the ball in the season opener against the Dodgers in Tokyo, spun four no-hit frames and was off and running.
Imanaga was enjoying a solid start to his sophomore campaign until a left hamstring injury flared up on May 4 against the Brewers, forcing him to the injured list for roughly seven weeks. While there is no definitive way to know how much the hamstring impacted Imanaga after his return, the inconsistency on display made it clear it did play a role.
“There’s always the causation-correlation question,” Cubs general manager Carter Hawkins said earlier this month. “But definitely, some of his decline over the course of the last couple months was after the hamstring injury. So, I think it’s fair to say it had an impact.”
Overall, Imanaga posted a 3.73 ERA in 25 starts, but that hardly tells the story of his year. He allowed 31 home runs in 144 2/3 innings (compared to 27 in 173 1/3 innings in ‘24), including giving up 20 in his final dozen outings. In those last 12 regular-season starts, Imanaga had a 5.17 ERA.
Initially, Imanaga was strong in his return from the IL, posting a 1.78 ERA in his first five starts. Under the hood, however, the lefty’s strikeout rate plummeted and his velocity was down. While Imanaga was able to continue throwing throughout his IL stint, there were some bad habits that formed in his delivery.
Even as Imanaga’s surface stats looked strong, both the pitcher and the Cubs could see some issues taking hold. His inability to drive with his lower half in the same manner as before the injury hurt his velo and created issues with his upper body. Hottovy said the pitcher’s arm slot drifted down and he became “more rotational,” which in turn impacted his execution.
“He knew his stuff wasn’t quite where he wanted,” Hottovy said. “And one big thing for us, too, was we saw some underlying things in play there that we were trying to get ahead of – biometrically and from just underlying numbers.”
Hottovy said there were two directions the Cubs could go with Imanaga at that point in the season. They could focus on execution and live with the velocity being down, or try to get the pitcher back to a better physical place via drills in order to regain some pitch speed. Imanaga tried to do the latter in-season and issues with execution followed, even as the velocity increased.
Imanaga’s velo dropped into the 89-90 mph range across June, July and August, but was ticking back up above 91 in September and nearing 92 mph on average in October. After the hamstring injury, however, the lefty’s fastball location included a lot of misses over the middle, whereas prior to the setback he was more precise in multiple areas of the zone. It was especially glaring against right-handed hitters.
“We wanted to continue to work on getting his velo and stuff back,” Hottovy said. “And that probably cost him some execution, but we were chasing the right things.”
And now that Imanaga is officially staying with the Cubs, they can continue to chase those things this offseason and into Spring Training.
Hottovy said not only was Imanaga starting to feel physically stronger by the time the Cubs’ postseason concluded, but the pitcher did a workout in late October at the Cressey Sports Performance lab in Florida. The results were good and the pitcher has started to send Hottovy and Chicago’s pitching group videos and updates from his ongoing work in Japan.
“He’s already been texting us,” Hottovy said. “He feels like his arm slot and posture is back to where he felt like it was prior to the hamstring injury, which is a good sign. That means he’s trusting his lower body enough to get to those positions. That’s encouraging for us right now.”