2025 Cubs player profiles: Shōta Imanaga

In camp and ready to go Photo by Matt Dirksen/Chicago Cubs/Getty Images 30-year old Sh\u014dta Imanaga took the baseball world by surprise in 2024, fashioning a 15-3 won/loss record, with a solid ERA of 2.91 over 29 games and 171 innings and with excellent peripherals. His success doesn’t seem to have been an accident, but almost anyone would expect some regression.

Most prognosticators view Imanaga as an 11- or 12-game winner in 2025, with a record along the same lines as Justin Steele. I think it’s safe enough that we just go with that more conservative sort of estimate and let’s just call his 2025 as something like 11-7. That makes the team 33-22 in round numbers after the top three…