<\/p>\n
It was a trying\u00a0\u2014 and brief\u00a0\u2014 start for Tatsuya Imai on Wednesday as he recorded only four outs in the Astros’ loss to the Twins.<\/p>\n
Jason Fochtman\/Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n
Tatsuya Imai\u2019s slider<\/a> is unpredictable. It will break to his glove-side at times, like a typical slider, and the \u201cwrong\u201d way at others. Hitters and pitch tracking tools can be equally confused. Even the man throwing the pitch, Houston Astros<\/a> catcher Christian V\u00e1zquez has said, is not always sure where it will go.<\/p>\n Imai\u2019s first Major League Baseball season, in a sense, has resembled the behavior of his signature pitch. Starts have oscillated toward extremes. Imai has silenced opposing lineups in some outings. Others have gone off the rails early, exposing the Astros’ bullpen and undermining their offense as a result.<\/p>\n Two outings before Wednesday were arguably Imai\u2019s strongest with Houston. He struck out 21 batters and walked one in quality starts against Cleveland<\/a> and Detroit<\/a>. The Tigers struck two hits and flailed at Imai\u2019s slider often across his six scoreless innings last Thursday at Comerica Park.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Imai\u2019s start Wednesday against the Twins, then, closer resembled a collapse in Kansas City<\/a>, in which he received a nine-run lead and recorded two outs. He totaled four outs against Minnesota at Daikin Park, allowing five runs and departing with Houston in a deficit it could not erase in an 8-3 loss<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just the command of his pitches,\u201d manager Joe Espada said, after his team\u2019s streak of five series wins ended. \u201cStuff was coming in pretty good, just struggled throwing strikes. That was just what I saw today. Came in, warmed up pretty good, good game plan. Just couldn\u2019t execute those pitches.\u201d<\/p>\n A pattern for Imai, so far, is that margin becomes magnified. Four of his 12 outings are quality starts, in which he has allowed five earned runs over 24 total innings. Four other times, Imai has been unable to complete three innings, with 17 runs allowed in five total innings in those starts.<\/p>\n It has resulted in a 6.14 ERA for Imai, whose positive stretches in his debut season are intertwined with pitfalls. The effectiveness that Imai has shown at times, paired with his contract, make harnessing more consistency a priority as the right-hander progresses in his transition to MLB.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cI think it won\u2019t be a perfect day every day,\u201d Imai said, through an interpreter. \u201cSo whenever I don\u2019t have the stuff, it\u2019s how much I can throw at least five innings, be able to perform with that bad stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n Learning to navigate lineups even with subpar stuff is a key for any starting pitcher, and perhaps part of this move with which Imai is still reckoning. Imai identified two issues that arose in his start Wednesday yet the result indicated a struggle to adjust to them in real time.<\/p>\n One aspect that made Imai\u2019s slider effective in Detroit, he said, was that it \u201clooked like a fastball. But for this outing, even when I was throwing it, I felt like the slider didn\u2019t look like a fastball \u2026 I couldn\u2019t throw it like a fastball, and that\u2019s probably why the hitter was able to hit it or make contact with it.\u201d<\/p>\n BATTERS Team Totals Wade Alvarez Pe\u00f1a Correa Delgado Trammell Paredes Allen Shewmake Walker Diaz Altuve Harris Smith V\u00e1zquez Loperfido Meyers Matthews Dezenzo Price Cole Johnson Whitcomb Salazar ___<\/p>\n PITCHERS Team Totals Ullola Meyers Hader Santa VanWey Brown King Okert Blubaugh Lambert Arrighetti Pearson Teng De Los Santos Roa Bolton Burrows Abreu Imai McCullers Murray Weiss France Sousa Salazar Alexander Gordon Javier Mu\u00f1oz Just one of four hits Imai allowed Wednesday was on his slider, but it was damaging. After Twins leadoff batter Trevor Larnach doubled on a fastball, Imai induced a flyout from Brooks Lee and struck out Kody Clemens, who chased a full-count slider in the dirt. Josh Bell then drove a 2-1 slider over the batter\u2019s eye in center field, a 452-foot blast that gave the Twins a two-run lead.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n From there, Imai\u2019s command\u00a0\u2014 or aggressiveness in the zone\u00a0\u2014 wavered. He walked five of the final nine batters he faced. Imai threw 23 of 57 pitches for strikes. Twins hitters totaled just 17 swings against him.<\/p>\n Imai got Tristan Gray to whiff on a full-count slider on his 34th\u00a0pitch of the first inning, stranding the bases loaded. Houston scored once in the bottom of the inning to halve its deficit to 2-1. Imai could not keep it there. After walking two batters in the second, Imai fell behind 3-0 to Clemens and had to come into the zone. Clemens crushed a 3-1 fastball for a three-run homer.<\/p>\n After his outing, which ended on a walk to his next batter, Bell, Imai said he reviewed video and noted a difference in the width of his feet in his pre-pitch setup compared to his start against the Tigers.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was one thing that I noticed, so for the next outing I want to try and focus on just the position in general and how wide the feet are going to be when I stand,\u201d Imai said. \u201cThat\u2019s probably a key point for the next outing.\u201d<\/p>\n Each outing is part of an acclimation for Imai and the Astros, but avoiding these abrupt exits must carry some urgency. Four relievers covered 7 \u2154 innings in Imai\u2019s wake Wednesday, with three working at least two innings, not a sustainable formula. A team off day Thursday may lessen the impact somewhat, yet the workload came at the end of a burdensome 13-day stretch for the Houston bullpen.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Cristian Javier is expected to join that unit Friday<\/a> upon returning from the injured list, which will require sending out a reliever. Miguel Ullola<\/a>, who made two strong outings in his first call-up but has minor-league options, would seem a candidate. That the Astros will not plug Javier into the rotation at first suggests they favor its current makeup, though Espada said pregame Wednesday \u201canything can change.\u201d<\/p>\n Inconsistency, then, remained a theme for Imai. Afterward, Espada applied a vote of confidence.<\/p>\n \u201cHis last few starts, he\u2019s been really good,\u201d Espada said. \u201cSo we\u2019re not going to let one start kind of derail that path that he has created that\u2019s actually been pretty good. He\u2019s throwing the ball extremely well. I thought the pitch selection was good. He lost the zone there, but the velo was good. So there\u2019s nothing I\u2019m concerned (about). Just one of those outings where stuff didn\u2019t land for him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a trying\u00a0\u2014 and brief\u00a0\u2014 start for Tatsuya Imai on Wednesday as he recorded only four outs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-358341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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