Inside Shota’s 13-pitch battle with McMahon

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 -- Standing at his locker on Wednesday afternoon, Shota Imanaga tried to find an apt metaphor for how he thinks about the battle between a pitcher and batter. The Cubs pitcher conversed with his interpreter, Edwin Stanberry, and found a way to describe his thought process.

“For me, it’s like the game ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors,’” Imanaga said via Stanberry. “They swing at a fastball. Say, they put up paper. And my fastball’s also paper. And then I keep on going, and they’re still swinging at the fastball. Then, I throw scissors.”

To go with Imanaga’s example, the Cubs lefty engaged in a game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” with Rockies third baseman Ryan McMahon in the second inning of Monday’s 5-0 win for Chicago. Their mini game within the larger contest persisted for 13 pitches, giving Imanaga an early test in his memorable Major League debut.

As Imanaga’s teammates have gotten to know him over the past couple of months, they have increasingly learned that this is no ordinary rookie. That label exists due to his Major League service time, but not due to his experience. It has become evident that the 30-year-old Imanaga, who led Nippon Professional Baseball in strikeouts in 2023, already thinks like a veteran.

“He’s smart. The wit and the smarts that he has to pitch with is clearly there,” said Cubs pitcher Kyle Hendricks, known as “The Professor” due to his own pitching intelligence. “It’s not just the stuff and the arm. The mind that’s behind it, what he’s looking at in hitters, what he’s already breaking down in how he’s attacking guys, is very, very amazing to watch, to be honest.”

Cubs veteran catcher Yan Gomes pointed to Monday’s at-bat between Imanaga and McMahon as an example of the lefty’s experience. Through the first five pitches, Imanaga showed his fastball three times and mixed in a slider and a splitter (which faded low and outside for a ball in the dirt).

With a 2-2 count, Imanaga proceeded from there by peppering the strike zone with fastball after fastball. The lefty threw seven four-seamers in a row, including five that McMahon fouled off between pitch Nos. 8-12.

“That’s really impressive that he just kept wanting to throw his heater,” Gomes said. “You're like 10-12 pitches in, and I'm like, ‘Hey, let's get this over. Let's go to the next guy.’ And he's like, ‘No, I'm going to keep going. I'm going to keep going at him.’ His willingness to battle definitely showed.”

Imanaga explained that he was initially protecting against a pulled ball in play due to there being a runner on first base. The more McMahon swung, the more Imanaga felt the swing he was seeing was an opposite-field approach.

“My thinking,” said Imanaga, “was, ‘OK, if I do go fastball, if he is trying to hit it oppo, worst-case scenario, it’s a single to left field, runner on first and second.’ So, I felt like in that moment, the fastball was probably the best pitch.”

Finally, when the time came to throw the 13th pitch, Imanaga finally went with scissors. The pitcher fired his signature split-change, which broke inside and dropped under McMahon’s swing for a strikeout.

“I can throw my changeup with the same arm slot, same arm swing,” Imanaga said. “Honestly, if I did throw an offspeed on like the sixth pitch, I might’ve gotten him out. Who knows? But on the 13th pitch, that’s when I changed it up and got him out.”