Cubs’ Shota Imanaga Unveils the Power of Rotational Spin Pitching Technique

The pitching of the Warriors continues.

It is Shota Konaga (30), playing for the Cubs from this season. He has pitched 15 1/3 innings in three major league games with a 0.00 earned run average (results as of April 16). He is the fifth pitcher since 1913, the year that defensive records were established, to pitch more than four innings and give up no earned runs in each of his debuts. He also struck out Shohei Ohtani, who has been in great form this season.

Takashi Kawamura, an expert in motion analysis and professor of physical education at the University of Tsukuba, analyzed the results as follows.

Taku Kawamura, a professor of physical education at Tsukuba University and an expert on motion analysis, analyzes the form as follows: “This is probably the ideal form for a small Japanese pitcher. While most American pitchers, who are larger in stature, take advantage of their height difference to throw down from above, Imanaga, who is 178 cm tall, uses the side rotation of his body to spin the ball from above when it leaves his hand. His pitching style is slightly more sideways than when he was in Japan, and he is able to utilize the centrifugal force of his arm more, which gives his 150 km/h straight ball a lift and sharpness that allows him to get strikeouts.

Let’s listen to Kawamura’s commentary while looking at a series of pictures of left-handed pitcher Imanaga’s pitches.

In (1), his weight is firmly on his left leg and his right knee is up to his stomach. This is probably due to the training of the hip joint. There are few pitchers, even in the majors, who can start the pitch with such stability.