{"id":68666,"date":"2024-03-20T07:00:37","date_gmt":"2024-03-20T11:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=68666"},"modified":"2024-03-19T17:23:46","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T21:23:46","slug":"steele-imanaga-promise-one-two-punch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/03\/20\/steele-imanaga-promise-one-two-punch\/","title":{"rendered":"Steele and Imanaga Showing Promise as Potential One-Two Punch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Cubs appear to have their one-two punch in the rotation set for the 2024 season. With just over a week until opening day, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/steelju01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-03-19_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Justin Steele<\/a> and rookie left-hander <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=imanag000sho&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-03-19_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Shota Imanaga <\/a>are coming off promising starts in Mesa. Steele and Imanaga make up two-thirds of the left-handed arms in Craig Counsell\u2019s first rotation as the Cubs skipper. Young southpaw <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/w\/wicksjo01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.baseball-reference.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-03-19_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jordan Wicks<\/a> will accompany the other two in <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/02\/09\/cubs-jordan-wicks-lefty-profile\/\" target=\"_self\">his first full season in the show<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>The Pride of Lucedale\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Steele was named the opening-day starter last week, the first nod in his young career. He most recently worked against Milwaukee at Sloan Park last Tuesday and looked rather sharp. Despite allowing two runs, Steele only gave up four hits in four innings in the hill. The southpaw punched out nine Brewers\u2019 in his first real ramp-up start in Spring Training.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p>&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Justin Steele&#8217;s 3Ks in the 1st. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/2HfI88SqiM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/2HfI88SqiM<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PitchingNinja\/status\/1767721813470027922?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 13, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Steele is coming off a breakout season in 2023. The 28-year-old was in the running for the NL Cy Young award before a rough month of September knocked him out of contention. He finished the campaign with a 16-5 record across 30 starts. Steele was sixth in baseball with a 3.06 ERA, alongside a 1.17 WHIP. There is no doubt that the former fifth-round pick is deserving of getting the opening day start. It shows that the new era of Cubs pitching has officially arrived, and the Lucedale, MI native has cemented himself as half of this rotation&#8217;s one-two punch moving forward. Steele is the first lefty to get the nod on opening day since Jon Lester was the Cubs\u2019 first pitcher to begin the season from 2017-2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>New Kid on the Block<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/01\/09\/shota-imanaga-signs-cubs\/\" target=\"_self\">Imanaga agreed to join the Cubs <\/a><\/span>on a friendly four-year contract. The 30-year-old has spent the last eight years in the NPB as a member of<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0the Yokohama Bay Stars. He finished his tenure in the NPB with a 3.18 ERA and a 64-50 record.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">After a rocky start in Spring Training, Imanaga followed up Steele\u2019s solid performance last Tuesday with an impressive outing of his own. Against the A\u2019s last Thursday, he tossed four and a third scoreless innings while only allowing three hits. Imanaga also racked up nine strikeouts in the 3-1 win.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p>&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Shota Imanaga was striking EVERYONE out \ud83d\udd25 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/EJDSNfsv7s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/EJDSNfsv7s<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WatchMarquee\/status\/1768387638094971010?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 14, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The former Bay Star will use his deceptive delivery to elevate his game to the highest level he has ever played. He looked sharp against Team USA in last year\u2019s World Baseball Classic, the first action MLB fans saw of Imanaga. Despite his fastball sitting in the low-to-mid 90s, his off-speed stuff will be the X-factor if Imanaga succeeds in Chicago.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Lead the Way\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even though the NL Central is up for grabs this season, someone grabbing the division crown is no easy task. For the teams favored toward the top of the division, it all begins with their rotations. Can the one-two punch of Steele and Imanaga rival the new-look rotations in St. Louis and Milwaukee? Cincinnati could very well be in the mix as well down the stretch. If the Cubs can get the same version of Steele from 2023 (maybe even a little better) to go alongside their new shiny toy in the rotation, their chances look strong.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credits: Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Cubs appear to have their one-two punch in the rotation set for the 2024 season. With just over a week until opening day, Justin Steele and rookie left-hander Shota Imanaga are coming off promising starts in Mesa. Steele and Imanaga make up two-thirds of the left-handed arms in Craig Counsell\u2019s first rotation as the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5007,"featured_media":68686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[68,69,645],"class_list":["post-68666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cubs","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-nl-central"],"modified_by":"Evan Mazza, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5007"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}