Every Cubs Starting Pitcher Analyzed For 2025 – PL Pro Early Access

To organize my High 400 Beginning Pitchers for 2025 article, I totally evaluation each workforce’s rotation and write the blurbs you see in February. I often do not share these publicly till then, however I needed to provide one other profit to those that help us with PL Professional. Y’all are those who preserve the lights on for us. Y’all rock.

With PL Professional, you may get entry to those articles, an ad-free expertise, entry to our 1,000+ member Discord (the most effective place to take baseball on the web!) our 2025 participant projections infused with PLV (Pitch modeling!), our unimaginable PLV Apps, together with Dwell PLV information in-season and rolling charts for Course of+, and a lot extra.

Get two free months of PL Professional when signing up yearly with promo code SPBREAKDOWNS – Join right here.

You can too be part of me LIVE on playback.television/pitcherlist all through the low season as I craft these articles by watching video games collectively, displaying my analysis course of, and chatting with our neighborhood.

Enormous because of Josh Mockensturm for creating these tables and discovering video for all these gamers.

Anticipated Starters

Shota Imanaga (CHC, LHP)

I do not see a big drop off for Imanaga in 2025, although the excellent rookie marketing campaign of a 2.91 ERA and 1.02 WHIP is unlikely to be replicated. And that is okay! He’ll proceed to stave off the walks with a four-seamer that has elite “HAVAA” and elite “iVB”, even at 91 mph and under common extension as a consequence of a nullifying splitter and Imanaga’s means to raise successfully.

The splitter is bound to dominate as soon as once more, even when its 27% SwStr takes a small tumble. Consider Imanaga as a greater model of Kevin Gausman: He has a strike-earning fastball with a devestating splitter with the advantage of a sweeper that works wonders in opposition to opposite-handed batters. That outlines a mid-3s ERA with a 25% strikeout fee and 1.10 WHIP, with some threat of a decline if his fastball’s attributes take a step again within the yr forward. We’ll take that every one day.

I’ve to say a slight concern about sophomore seasons for Japanese pitchers. After the massive improve in workload throughout their rookie season, we have seen Japanese pitchers put on down of their second yr within the majors, making a small cloud of haze for Imanaga within the yr forward. However each pitcher is an harm threat! Yep, that is utterly truthful and I am not rating Imanaga decrease primarily based on that anxiousness – simply do not consider Imanaga as a lock for 32+ begins moreso than another.

Fast Take: Imanaga’s splitter and sweeper grant him strikeouts in opposition to each LHB and RHB whereas his four-seamer is a dependable strike pitch to arrange his vicious weapons. He was in a position to dodge premature longballs in 2024 to maintain his ERA below 3.00 and whereas we’re unlikely to see that efficiency once more, the general manufacturing ought to be there.

Justin Steele (CHC, LHP)