Cubs lefty Shota Imanaga has Paul Skenes in his crosshairs heading into 2025

By any and all measure, Shota Imanaga's rookie season with the Chicago Cubs was a success. Frankly, without him, it's hard to imagine where the Cubs' record might have stood at season's end given the club's 23-6 record in his starts.

But the 31-year-old left-hander isn't taking anything for granted heading into 2025. In particular, Imanaga took note of the WAR difference between himself and Dodgers right-hander and fellow countryman Yoshinobu Yamamoto - and Cy Young finalist and NL Rookie of the Year Paul Skenes.

“Looking back, I would look at the stats, and I would look at WAR and comparing, let’s say, [Dodgers rookie Yoshinobu] Yamamoto — he threw less innings than me,” Imanaga said. “I believe I had a 3 [WAR by Fangraphs’ metrics] and he had a 2.8 [fWAR]. He threw less innings, but his WAR was pretty close to me. And looking at a guy like [Pirates rookie] Paul Skenes, his WAR was incredible.”

So where can Imanaga improve? After all, we're talking about a pitcher who led the Cubs with 15 wins, was an All-Star, finished fourth in National League Rookie of the Year voting and fifth in NL Cy Young balloting. His 6.21 K/BB ratio led the entire league and a 2.91 ERA ranked third among NL pitchers, trailing only Chris Sale and Zach Wheeler.

For starters, he's looking to keep the ball in the yard a bit more in 2025. His 27 home runs allowed last year ranked near the top of the league and his fly ball tendencies as a pitcher came back to bite him. He avoided things snowballing by working out of jams and executing his pitches, but cutting down the home runs would be huge this year.

Along with that, Imanaga wants to strike more batters out. He led all Cubs pitchers with 173.1 innings pitched and finished the year with 174 punchouts. If he can find a way to push that total closer to the 200 mark - something no Chicago hurler has accomplished since Yu Darvish in 2019, he'd see a nice bump in fWAR, as well.

Barring a late-offseason trade, the Cubs have failed to land the big-name starting pitcher some hoped for when the offseason began - but improvements from Imanaga, paired with a full season from Justin Steele and stability from guys like Jameson Taillon and Matthew Boyd, could give Chicago a strong group of arms to ride back to October.