Focus on Pitch Modeling Over Scouting May Have Made Difference in Cubs Landing Shōta Imanaga

Shōta Imanaga will be on the bump Tuesday to open the Cubs’ crosstown series against the White Sox as he makes his first start since a disastrous outing in Milwaukee. It’s a testament to just how great he’s been that his ERA is still at a sterling 1.86 after allowing seven earned runs over 4.1 innings. Bad start aside, Imanaga has been far better than anyone expected at this early juncture. But just how much better depends on how various teams judged his talent.

There’s an excellent piece on that topic in The Athletic, which I had to jump through hoops to re-subscribe to in order to read it, from a combination of Patrick Mooney, Sahadev Sharma, and Ken Rosenthal. They go into great detail on the lefty’s time in Chicago prior to joining the Cubs and how that informed his decision, plus there are several looks at how his personality has played a role in his acclimation.

What I was most interested in, however, were the quotes from Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi. While it’s perhaps a little too binary than this, a big reason the Cubs were able to land Imanaga for much less than everyone expected may be a simple matter of weighing data more than the eye test.

“Our pitch-grade models really liked him,” Zaidi told The Athletic. “They had plus grades on all three of his pitches — fastball, split and breaking ball. But our scouting reports weren’t as strong, and it’s understandable because what makes his pitches so effective doesn’t jump out to the naked eye. When you layer in the competition gap in scouting international professionals, it’s always easier to bank on louder tools than subtler skills like having pitches with unique movement patterns.”

It’s also a matter of what a given organization prioritizes, with most in today’s game placing a greater emphasis on velocity. If scouts are writing guys off because they’re not sitting mid-90s, well, they’re not giving Imanaga a second look. There’s also the matter of trusting that his stuff would play in MLB, which is a valid concern.

“The availability of pitch data from the Pacific Rim has theoretically made these valuations more sound, but there’s still a leap to take when you can’t hang your hat on high-end velocity,” Zaidi explained. “I imagine there are scouts around the game that did see him as a high-end starter in the big leagues, but I suspect that the teams that were highest on him put the greatest stock in their pitch-model valuations.”

Of course, there’s a flip side to this coin. The Cubs may have gotten a bargain because they didn’t prioritize elite velocity, but it’s possible they might not be doing enough to bring in those big arms now and in the future. Even with guys like Luke Little, Ben Brown, and Cade Horton with or near the big club, the organization’s inability to properly evaluate and develop hard throwers is a long-running lament. It was actually intentional until just a few years ago.

The Cubs were more concerned with floors than ceilings, a philosophy that persists with the front office’s desire to seek value over risk in nearly every circumstance. Carter Hawkins called it “measured aggression,” though I think most would put the emphasis on the first half of that phrase rather than the last. With all due respect to the team’s extensive work in pursuing Imanaga, signing him was largely a function of other teams’ collective failure.

That’s why you still need to have a strong mix of scouting and science to find those players who make sense as fits for a given organization. Imanaga has been more than the Cubs could have hoped for, now they just need to stop wasting by playing good baseball again.