The Chicago Cubs entered this offseason with a need for starting pitching, and now they’ll likely need to find even more arms. The Cubs declined their three-year, $57 million club option for left-hander Shota Imanaga on Tuesday, according to reports. The move triggered a $15.25 million player option in Imanaga’s contract, which he also declined, making him a free agent.
The move comes after what was a down season for the Japanese southpaw. Imanaga went 9-8 with a 3.73 ERA across 25 starts in 2025. But those numbers don’t tell the entire story. The one-time All-Star had a second half to forget, with a 4.70 ERA over his final 13 starts.
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His struggles continued into the postseason, where he pitched to a 8.10 ERA in two starts, including a dreadful NLDS outing against the Milwaukee Brewers in which he allowed four earned runs over 2 2/3 innings. Imanaga allowed at least one home run in each of his final 11 starts of 2025, regular season and postseason. Chicago chose not to start him in its winner-take-all NLDS Game 5, opting for a bullpen game instead — a telling reflection of the Cubs’ lack of confidence in the southpaw.
Imanaga finishes his tenure in Chicago 24-11 with a 3.28 ERA over 54 starts. He signed a four-year, $54 million deal with the Cubs the winter before the 2024 season. Now Imanaga, 32, will look for a new opportunity elsewhere. He becomes an interesting addition to a starting pitching market that lacks quality left-handers beyond Ranger Suárez.
With Imanaga’s departure, Chicago’s rotation is notably thin. While All-Star Matthew Boyd and NL Rookie of the Year finalist Cade Horton return, there are a lot of questions behind them. The Cubs will get left-hander Justin Steele back at some point in 2026, after he finishes recovering from Tommy John Surgery early in 2025. Other internal options include Javier Assad and Ben Brown, but the Cubs will surely need to acquire another arm or two this winter. — Dorsey
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What to make of Imanaga’s free agency?
The complex, four-year contract Imanaga signed with the Cubs two years ago featured a crucial decision point following the 2025 season, when Chicago could opt to guarantee Imanaga three more seasons at $57 million or decline to do so, instead affording Imanaga the opportunity to exercise a $15.25 million player option for 2026. Chicago declined to extend Imanaga for three more years, and Imanaga then declined his own one-year option, adding him to the intriguing pool of free-agent starting pitchers.
Brilliant as a 30-year-old rookie in 2024, Imanaga regressed in his second major-league season in terms of both durability and effectiveness, missing several starts due to a hamstring strain midsummer and seeing his ERA rise from 2.91 to 3.73. While he remains an elite strike-thrower who doesn’t allow a boatload of baserunners — his WHIP actually improved in his second season — Imanaga is troublingly susceptible to opponents’ slugging, with a 1.93 HR/9 that ranked second-highest among pitchers with at least 100 innings thrown in 2025. That bugaboo proved costly in the postseason, when he surrendered two key long balls against Milwaukee in NLDS Game 2.
It’s an imperfect profile, but there is still a lot to like about what Imanaga brings on and off the field. Whether he ends up securing a deal in excess of the three-year, $57 million structure that Chicago declined to exercise is suddenly one of the more interesting subplots of this offseason. — Shusterman
