CHICAGO -- Shota Imanaga overpowered the Phillies in his previous start, piling up strikeouts and missing bats at a rapid rate. The Cubs lefty was tasked with facing the same lineup on Tuesday night and he made a point to adjust his approach in this meeting at Wrigley Field.
The pitching line was different, but the dominance was the same.
In a 7-4 win over the Phillies, Imanaga gave the Cubs seven innings and limited the damage to one solo home run off the bat of slugger Kyle Schwarber. Imanaga ended with only one strikeout, but he leaned heavily on his fastball and induced weak contact all night long to continue his stellar start to the season.
On Wednesday at Citizens Bank Park, Imanaga struck out 11 in six innings against the Phillies and tied a Cubs’ pitch-tracking era record with 26 whiffs (swinging strikes). He did so with a balanced attack on the mound, featuring his four-seamer 35% of the time and his signature splitter at a 33% rate.
In this subsequent matchup, Imanaga upped his fastball rate to 51% (44 of his 87 pitches) and trimmed the splitter use to 28%. He also threw fewer sweepers (20% on Wednesday vs. 11% on Tuesday), opting for an aggressive style. Imanaga did issue one walk and scattered three hits, but no baserunners (beyond Schwarber’s sixth-inning blast) reached further than second.
Following Imanaga’s exit, Bryce Harper belted a two-run homer off Cubs lefty Riley Martin in the eighth.
Through five starts this season, Imanaga now has a 2.17 ERA with 32 strikeouts against six walks in 29 innings, in which he has allowed just 15 hits. Three of those are home runs, which account for five of the seven runs the lefty has surrendered this year.
The Cubs had a surplus of baserunners against Phillies lefty Jesús Luzardo in the first five innings, but did not break through until the fifth. Moisés Ballesteros came off the bench and drew a pinch-hit, bases-loaded walk against reliever Orion Kerkering to get Chicago on the board and put a run on Luzardo’s line.
The North Siders’ offense started rolling from there. In the sixth, Michael Busch came through with a two-run single with the bases loaded to put the Cubs ahead, 3-1. In the seventh, Nico Hoerner (solo shot) and Seiya Suzuki (two-run homer) each went deep off reliever Tim Mayza to increase the cushion.