Astros right-hander Tatsuya Imai’s transition from NPB to MLB did not go well. He tumbled out of the rotation and ended the year as a seldom-used reliever. He made the postseason roster but didn’t pitch in the Wild Card round.
The final line was a 4.93 ERA across 76 2/3 innings. Imai made 23 appearances, 15 of which were starts. He failed to make it out of the first inning in three of those games. Imai had a solid 28.7% strikeout rate but a brutal 15.1% walk rate. He languished in the bullpen over the final two months of the season, pitching just eight times.
Imai has the opportunity to opt out of the three-year, $54MM deal he inked with Houston last winter. It’s hard to imagine any scenario where he passes up $18MM for the 2027 campaign. Assuming he opts in, he’ll likely get another chance in the rotation. The Astros have minimal proven options behind ace Hunter Brown. The group of candidates includes Hayden Wesneski, Cristian Javier, Ronel Blanco, Peter Lambert, Ethan Pecko, Mike Burrows, and Kai-Wei Teng. It’s not exactly an impenetrable depth chart.
If Imai is going to stick in the rotation next season, he’s going to need to make some adjustments. The first task for him this offseason should be finding a viable third pitch. Imai threw his four-seamer and slider nearly 90% of the time this year. It’s tough to navigate a big-league lineup with two offerings.
The fastball/slider combo can work, like the early versions of Spencer Strider and Hunter Greene, but both pitches need to be elite. Imai’s slider was excellent. The GIF-generating machine had a near-40% whiff rate and held opponents to a .167 batting average. His fastball? Not so much. It’s a low-ride pitch that sits at 94.8 mph with above-average armside run. Imai’s four-seamer generated a Run Value of zero. It generally limited damage, but allowed a 47% hard-hit rate and a .280 batting average.
Normally, the two-pitch guys fake a changeup or curveball 5-10% of the time. It was the changeup for Strider when he first established himself. Greene tried a changeup, then a splitter. The funny thing about Imai’s arsenal is that it included six pitches. Baseball Savant has him throwing a sinker, splitter, and changeup 2-5% of the time. There were also six curveballs.
The splitters and changeups were basically lefty-only options. Imai only threw a handful of them to right-handed hitters. Figuring out something to get lefties out will be important. Imai held same-handed hitters to a .604 OPS. He punched them out at a 30.6% clip. Lefties posted a .714 OPS and a 27.5% strikeout rate.
The swing-and-miss stuff is there. Imai ranked in the 94th percentile with a 32.7% whiff rate. He had a strong 13.1% swinging-strike rate. The glaring issue is the free passes. Among pitchers who threw at least 70 innings, no one had a higher walk rate. Imai had basically identical splits, too. He walked righties and lefties almost equally.
Imai had a 59.5% strike rate, which isn’t going to cut it. It’d be easy to just tell him to trust his stuff and pound the zone, given the whiff numbers, but he also gets hit hard. Imai ranked in the 8th percentile with a 44.1% hard-hit rate. One route to boosting the strike rate would be more sinkers. It’s a small sample, but the pitch had a decent 54.1% zone rate. That was his best mark, aside from the half-dozen curveballs. The Brown breakthrough was fueled by a shift away from the four-seamer in favor of more sinkers. Houston has done it before.
If Imai can’t find his footing, maybe he can be a bullpen weapon. He posted a 2.00 ERA across 18 innings as a reliever. He still had 11 walks in those outings, so the control didn’t improve. The two-pitch approach would certainly fit better out of the bullpen. The Astros don’t exactly have a plethora of options behind closer Josh Hader, with Bryan Abreu, Steven Okert, and Enyel De Los Santos all heading to free agency.
Photo courtesy of Erik Williams and Troy Taormina, Imagn Images
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