Tatsuya Imai's consistency with Astros won't come without one big change

At the beginning of the season, one thing that could be said about Houston Astros prized offseason acquisition, Tatsuya Imai, was that he was consistent. Unfortunately, the type of consistency he showed was consistently poor performances. However, since coming off the IL, he's shown flashes of being the hurler that the Astros thought they were getting, while also continuing to have the meltdowns that made him look like a huge bust.

Imai's last two starts are a microcosm of what we've seen. On June 12, he just didn't have it, lasting just 2/3 of an inning while surrendering five earned runs against the Kansas City Royals. He followed that up with a six-inning, 11-strikeout performance against the Cleveland Guardians.

“He came in today and wanted to show he’s better [than his Kansas City performance],” Joe Espada said following Imai's start against the Guardians. “Today he showed he’s something that when his stuff is on, he can be unhittable.”

On the surface, it's the walks that are holding Imai back from realizing his true potential. The 28-year-old has walked 13.3% of batters he's faced, which has led to an untenable 5.27 BB/9. But it's the last word of Espada's sentence that holds the key. Imai can be "unhittable" regardless of the walks. The problem is, he doesn't do it enough.

Tatsuya Imai can be successful for the Astros despite the walks, but it's unclear if he can execute

There's a reason why the phrase "effectively wild" exists. While it's much easier to have success as a pitcher, particularly as a starter, if you can pound the strike zone and paint the corners, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

Pitchers who can leverage otherworldly stuff to keep hitters off balance can get the job done even with spotty command. However, they need to be able to control their arsenal enough to get whiffs and chases out of the zone, racking up strikeouts and also weak contact.

Imai is halfway there. He owns a 32% whiff rate on the season, which is a 91st percentile performance. However, the other half of that equation, getting hitters to chase, has been a struggle. Against the right-hander, batters only expand the zone 27.2% of the time, which comes in at the 19th percentile. It's a weird mix; typically, guys with high whiff rates also have high chase rates, but it's where we are.

And that's where the issue lies with Imai. He's not getting the soft contact that pitchers usually enjoy when they get hitters to chase out of the zone with frequency. He's not a guy who might walk a handful of guys because his pitches either dart to the corner or miss the zone completely. Instead, he's the type of hurler who will miss out of the zone, but also miss badly within it.

Imai has a 44.8% hard-hit rate (13th percentile), 90.5 miles per hour average exit velocity (15th percentile), and 8.6% barrel percentage (35th percentile). All of that indicates that he grooves pitches far too often.

The combined no-hitter he started on May 25 against the Texas Rangers is a prime example of the good and the bad. Imai walked four batters in the game, which, to some, was a concern. However, the real issue is what happens when he's getting hit hard, and with an average exit velocity equal to his season average in that start, he got lucky that some of those balls were smoked right to where his defenders were positioned.

Imai needs to be a guy who occasionally has trouble locating the strike zone because of the incredible movement of his pitches, rather than a guy who isn't quite sure where it's going to land once it leaves his hand. In the case of the former, he'll be able to pitch around the walks more often than not. In the case of the latter, he'll still issue too many free passes, but then also groove costly meatballs that lead to big meltdowns.

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