{"id":28328,"date":"2026-04-23T01:56:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T01:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/?p=28328"},"modified":"2026-04-23T01:56:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T01:56:28","slug":"shota-imanaga-wins-second-straight-start-against-phillies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/?p=28328","title":{"rendered":"Shota Imanaga wins second straight start against Phillies"},"content":{"rendered":"


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CHICAGO — Shota Imanaga<\/a> 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, but he quickly felt that his signature splitter was not operating as sharply as usual.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Imanaga was forced to adjust his plan, but the dominance remained the same.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe sign of a really good pitcher,\u201d manager Craig Counsell said after the Cubs ran their winning streak to seven in a row with a 7-4 victory over the Phillies<\/a> at Wrigley Field. \u201cIt\u2019s not easy facing that team again two starts in a row. He pitched really, really well.\u201d\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Imanaga gave the Cubs seven innings and limited the damage to one solo home run off the bat of slugger Kyle Schwarber. Without his splitter working as well as he hoped, Imanaga ended with only one strikeout. He leaned heavily on his fastball and induced weak contact all night long to continue his stellar start to the season.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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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 he has surrendered this year. In his last four turns since giving up four runs in his season debut, Imanaga has a 1.13 ERA.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cLook, he\u2019s pitching at a really high level right now,\u201d Counsell said. \u201cBut again, he has done this. He has pitched like this. So, this is not something he hasn\u2019t done. So, it\u2019s not above what he\u2019s capable of. It\u2019s sustainable.\u201d\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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On Wednesday at Citizens Bank Park, Imanaga struck out 11 in six innings<\/a> against the Phillies and tied a Cubs\u2019 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.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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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.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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That was partially out of necessity, but Cubs catcher Carson Kelly also saw that the move to more fastballs was working.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cYou go in with a game plan, but then also the hitters will dictate kind of what to do,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cAlso, you still need to throw the pitch. Even if he doesn\u2019t have it, it\u2019s his splitter. He needs the pitch, right? And if he doesn\u2019t have it, you find spots to use it where you might not give up damage. But his heater was really good today.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cHe was trusting it. He was locating it really well and the hitters were telling us to keep throwing it. With the way they were taking it, the swings that we were getting on them, it kind of dictated what the rest of the game plan was going to be.\u201d\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Kelly pointed to a moment in the seventh, when Imanaga generated a groundout off the bat of J.T. Realmuto with a sinker.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cBeing able to do that,\u201d Kelly said, \u201cis a sign of like, \u2018He\u2019s in a good spot and having the confidence to execute different pitches.\u2019\u201d\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Imanaga did issue one walk and scattered three hits, but no baserunners (beyond Schwarber\u2019s sixth-inning blast) reached further than second.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe control was a little bit off tonight,\u201d Imanaga said via interpreter Edwin Stanberry. \u201cBut I was able to throw it in locations where they couldn\u2019t do that much damage. … Carson came up with a game plan and he was calling a great game.\u201d\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Cubs had a surplus of baserunners against Phillies lefty Jes\u00fas Luzardo in the first five innings, but did not break through until the fifth. Mois\u00e9s 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\u2019s line.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The North Siders\u2019 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.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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That late push was sufficient in supporting another great start from Imanaga.\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cEven if he didn\u2019t have his best stuff, it didn\u2019t look like it,\u201d Suzuki said via Stanberry. \u201cThat was reassuring. When he\u2019s pitching like that and getting outs, the thought is, \u2018We want to score runs and give him some breathing room.\u2019 We were able to do that.\u201d\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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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, but he quickly felt that his signature splitter was not operating as sharply as usual. Imanaga was forced to adjust his … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Shota-Imanaga-wins-second-straight-start-against-Phillies.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28330,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28328\/revisions\/28330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}