Tatsuya Imai's latest rehab start only confirmed what Astros fans already knew

The Houston Astros rotation needs help, but it’s hard to see how that help is on the way with Tatsuya Imai recovering from arm fatigue and making a second rehab start. His first start with Double-A Corpus Christi went poorly. He allowed five runs on six hits with two strikeouts and three walks in two innings. While the score results were better in the second — 3 IP, 1 R, 1 H — the glaring issue was that he walked five batters in those three innings. 

Imai threw just 27 of his 63 pitches for strikes. Maybe even worse, the Isotopes chased just two pitches that were out of the zone. If a pitcher can’t throw the ball in the zone and can’t get the opponent to swing at pitches out of the zone, where does that leave him? It leaves him with far more questions than answers, which is pretty consistent with the way Imai’s season has gone with the Astros. Every day that passes, it becomes more and more of an inevitability that Imai will not exercise his opt-out clause and the Astros will be on the hook for $36 million more after paying him $18 million this year. 

This start for Sugar Land was an opportunity to change the narrative with both team management and Astros fans. But Imai simply couldn’t do it because he couldn’t throw enough strikes.

On Monday, before he started, manager Joe Espada made it pretty clear that the goals weren't quite as lofty as they were when Imai inked his deal.

“I’d really just rather him just go throw a ton of strikes and (get) balls in play (rather) than seeing ways. We want him to trust throwing the ball in the zone. If he goes tomorrow and does that, we’ll feel good about the outing and what to do for him next.”

It wasn’t all negative for Imai in his start. He was able to generate four swings and misses on his fastball, which averaged a touch more than his season average velocity. His spin rate was up as well. He also landed a few called strikes with the pitch as well. As Espada’s quote above indicates, the Astros are confident that he can succeed in the zone. And he was very good in his first two innings, needing just 27 pitches to retire the side twice with a walk allowed.

But his slider, which was supposed to be his best pitch, was highly ineffective. He threw 11 of them, and only two were in the zone. He did get a chase and a whiff on one of them, but threw just one other strike. The rest were all taken for balls. And when he shifted to using his changeup to work through that, he wasn’t able to locate that either. The big issue is that when he missed, he missed so badly that it didn’t even give the opponent a question of whether to swing or take.

What’s next for Tatsuya Imai?

The Astros have already confirmed that Imai's next start will be with the big-league club. It would seem likely he's activated ahead of the team's series against the Seattle Mariners next week.

The mediocrity of the division and the American League as a whole has given the Astros time to work out issues and remain on the periphery of the race in the early going, but they will need to make a move sooner or later, and it’s awfully hard to count on Imai to be part of the solution.

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