Jordan Wicks has had two incredibly tough assignments to start the year. In his first game, Wicks had to take on the reigning champs at their home ballpark in their first series of the season. And for dessert, Wicks got to face the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose lineup begins with three future Hall-of-Famers in their prime, at Wrigley Field in awful conditions.
And while the results look just mediocre for Wicks through two starts (8.2 IP, 4ER, 4.15 ERA), the underlying performance has been nothing short of excellent (the advanced stats, the velocity, and the eye test). Like seriously really good, even ignoring the context of whom he was facing.
Jordan Wicks – Looking Good
For one, Wicks has struck out 13 of the 43 batters he’s faced, which is an elite 30.2% strikeout rate. And he’s doing that not because he’s simply getting lucky on called strikes for a couple games, but rather because he’s whiffing batters like crazy. It’s only two starts so whatever on the projection side, but Wicks’ 33.3% whiff rate so far this season ranks 17th in MLB. To put that in perspective, that would’ve ranked third highest in MLB last season, and it’s exactly 10 percentage points higher than the mark he posted last year. So, yeah, he’s basically been an elite whiff-getter against two really, really good teams.
For another, he’s just throwing the ball a little harder than normal, which is especially good to see so early in the season (and when the weather is so awful). Last year, Wicks averaged 92.2 MPH on his four-seamer, this year, it’s up to 93 MPH, and I saw him touch 94+ MPH a bunch of times against the Dodgers over the weekend. That’s not a huge jump, but again, velocity usually ramps UP as the season progresses, and that extra click helps his changeup play up.
He’s also throwing the fastball more often here in the early going than he was last season (48.1% vs 27.6%), and locating it beautifully, especially against righties, where most of the heat is up and in.
And I could say the same for his changeup, which he’s burying away against righties, but still catching some of the plate. And I haven’t even gotten to his slider, which is breaking nearly 4 inches more than it was last season:
And on top of those three pitches, he’s also utilized a curveball, a cutter, and a sinker. The guy may not have elite stuff, but he does have a lot of pitches. And right now, he’s throwing them harder and locating them better than ever.
It’s still too early to think about re-projecting Wicks (or anything like that), and the ceiling is probably still just a good middle-of-the-rotation arm, at best. But I’m certainly surprised by just how good he’s looked early on, and a few more starts where he LOOKS this good could change the way we think about him moving forward.
And then there’s Shota Imanaga, whose story is pretty similar.
Shota Imanaga … Also Good
I think given his slightly better stuff and prior experience, the pre-season ceiling for Imanaga was set a little higher than it was for Wicks, but he still isn’t expected to wind up as the sort of top-of-the-rotation pitcher he looks like so far.
Imanaga’s first assignment of the year came against the Rockies at home, a much easier assignment than the Rangers on the road, but he still delivered the goods: 6.0 IP, 2H, 0ER, 0BB, 9Ks. And he certainly looked like he was on his way to a repeat performance this weekend against the Dodgers, before the rain artificially shortened his appearance to just 4.0 scoreless innings with only two hits, no walks, and another three strikeouts, including blowing this fastball by Shohei Ohtani.
Executing that fastball at the top of the zone was a priority of Imanaga’s over the spring, and so far, it looks like he’s accomplishing that goal quite well. But look at the absolutely PRISTINE command of all of his pitches. It’s like a work of art.
Are you kidding me with this?
You cannot ask for better placement than that.
And so I’m not surprised to learn that Shota Imanaga has the sixth highest strikeout rate (34.3%) and eighth highest whiff rate (35%) in MLB.
Shota can really stand to start limiting some of the hard contact and getting the ball on the ground more often — the wind has probably knocked down at least one would-be homer — but the overall package just looks so dominant. And his teammates agree:
“He’s awesome,” Michael Busch said via The Athletic. “Man, that guy, just watching his presence on the mound — there’s something about him, he’s kind of in his own world. He’s so good and he’s so confident in there. As fielders behind him, we got all the trust in him to go and do his thing.”
We obviously don’t know where things would’ve gone on Sunday, but I do want to point out that Imanaga wasn’t just good, he was efficient. With a six-pitch 3rd inning and a four-pitch 4th inning, Imanaga was at just 43-pitches (32 of which were strikes … LOL) through his 4.0 innings of work. That means he had a lot of runway to go deep in that game against the Dodgers if the weather cooperated. Alas. We’ll have to wait for his next start to see him again.
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Like Wicks, I don’t want us to get ahead of ourselves on Imanaga after just 10.0 innings of work. There will be days, when the wind is blowing out at Wrigley, that the homers will bite him. And, again, he can’t have so few groundball outs. That’s just not good. But also like Wicks, I think it’s very fair to say that he looks AT LEAST as good as anyone could’ve reasonably hoped coming into the season, and arguably a lot better than that.
And that’s very fortunate for the Cubs. Because right now, they’re playing without their ace lefty, Justin Steele, and another rotationmate in Jameson Taillon. If either of these guys were off to a less stellar start, we wouldn’t be feeling nearly as good about the 2024 Chicago Cubs as we do right now.