Scouting report on Japanese free agent pitcher Tatsuya Imai | Cubs 360 | Marquee Sports Network

Marquee Sports Network’s Cole Wright, Elise Menaker and Lance Brozdowski breakdown Japanese pitcher Tatsuya Imai and whether the Cubs would target Imai this offseason in free agency on “Cubs 360.”

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Scouting report on Japanese free agent pitcher Tatsuya Imai | Cubs 360 | Marquee Sports Network

How about the international market? Some guys starting to post from Japan, Lance. Absolutely. Yeah, let’s talk about him. Well, we’re going to the curve. I want to talk about Tatsi up high. This guy’s going to be 27 next year. Really interesting starter pitch for the CU Lions. Now, there’s a lot of angles here that you could go at from the data side. From my perspective, I want to dig into the three things in particular. The fast velocity is really good. He’s 955. He touches about 98 99 miles per hour. You see the major league average for seating is right around 94.5. The big thing, talk about why is he so effective? It’s the release height. It’s much lower than the major league average by about 10 in. That creates a visual perception for a hitter of his fast ball being very flat to the zone. So, it’s hard to kind of get under it and get on top of it. And then the last thing here is really weird. I’m going to show you it in a second, but his slider moves arm side. So, a lot of the time you think of like Justin Steel sweeper from the left side, right? A lot of lateral sweep. Even we were talking Michael King, ton of sweep. Generally, those pitchers are moving kind of away from righties to the glove side. Mai goes to his arm side. So, what am I talking about here with the fast ball release height first? Just watch his delivery. He’s a little bit undersized, gets down the mound really well, but it’s really low slot. The average arm angle in baseball is right around 40°. He’s around 20°. That’s a big difference. You see his old cub friend here, Flora striking out against my the friendl. And then this is a slider I’m talking about. Watch the movement of this pitch. You can see it’s a slider because he’s on the side of the ball there. This next one here, right? If you look at that pitch, you almost think that’s a splitter, right? Because it’s moving to the arm side. This is what I’m talking about. It’s a very odd shape, one you don’t see a lot in Major League Baseball. That makes it maybe a little bit difficult to project going forward in Major League Baseball cuz there’s not a lot of precedent of this arm slide slider shape, but he throws hard. He’s also got like three variations of offsp speed that are all really effective. He’s a fascinating arm. You’re going to have to pay him probably close to $150 million or so with this posting fee attached to him. What do you guys think? Okay. At least from what we just saw from Lance showing us, do you feel that the velocity fits in with the Cubs rotation, but the arm slot pretty much the same as everyone else? Would you agree with that one? Yeah. And I think that’s what makes him intriguing is he’s not the biggest guy. Uh but then I think neither is Yamamoto and he’s done just fine. Now, is this guy Yamamoto? Not quite. But still, he can, you know, I never really worry about size as much in baseball, especially also with pitching. Repeatable, compact. The low slot’s the thing now. that low upshoot slot is something very interesting. The deep stuff is a little bit different. The high up slots that you pointed out very uh and also I think too he’s got the swing and miss but he also induces ground balls. So how perfect is that and what we see so often with pitchers in this Cubs defense and how it plays nicely together. And I do think there is this piece to you know the Cubs are enticing because they’ve already got it set up for Shota and Seiya. So they have adjusted and adapted to these players coming over from Japan. Now, could you argue the Dodgers are probably, you know, even ahead of the Cubs? Sure. But I think the the Cubs have a very good argument and a very good case when these players come over that they have have it set up for them nicely and especially showed up on the pitching front for them. Because I think you’ve even seen how especially Seya has gotten more comfortable over the years and the team probably more familiar with what do these players need? How can we help them? Whether it’s nutrition or workouts, whatever it may be. And so, um, yeah, I thought the first time I saw him looked like an easy mid90s, upper 90s. So that’s what stuck out to me and I was like I like this guy. He’s not a guy that’s necessarily going to walk into a room and turn head stature-wise. Not necessarily Tyler Glass now, but when you take a look at his overall arsenal, Lance, is this something that could be very attractive not only to the Chicago Cubs, but a whole bunch of teams major league wide. I think he’s going to be a hot commodity partially because there’s going to be a lot of variance around his profile. When you’re projecting these guys to come over, it’s often tough to like totally lock in and be like, we know his projection will be this. You look at a Dylan Sees, he’s been in the majors for a while. He’s basically a metronome from an innings pitch standpoint. I kind of know what I’m getting from him. Amaya, you have a wider range of outcomes. So, it becomes a tolerance of what team wants to pay maybe over what another team is willing to pay. If the Cubs are willing to go to 130 million on him is another team that’ll go to 140 150. That risk calculation on him is just harder to peg, I think, from a front office standpoint. That’s attractive to some teams. Other teams that prefer safety maybe not so much. Does his size does that translate to 2026 and beyond? Because guys aren’t necessarily going seven, eight, nine innings. are going out there four, five, let’s call to the bullpen. Yeah, the size element is tough. I know there’s a lot of people that think maybe size has some impact on longevity long term, but the thing I’ll mention relative to the market, he’s a lot younger. He’s only 27 years old. Michael King, all these other guys we’re talking about are 31 plus. That is also an element that’s really attractive to a lot of orgs.