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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Five walks, just be, you cannot,
00:05 you cannot lay a hand on this guy
00:07 if you are a National League hitter right now.
00:10 From the advanced statistical profile,
00:12 I mean, is this guy gonna regress?
00:14 Is he this good?
00:15 What's the secret?
00:16 Is he, you know, is he throwing
00:18 nine different pitches for strikes?
00:19 How is Imanaga this good, Gray?
00:21 - Yeah, no, I think it's really
00:25 his split finger and his fastball.
00:27 So he throws like, he's not like incredible velocity.
00:30 He's only throwing, I think, 92 miles per hour on average.
00:34 His split finger really just bottoms out
00:37 and it tunnels similar to the fastball.
00:39 So basically what that means is
00:41 the split finger looks like the fastball
00:43 coming out of the hand.
00:45 So the batter really has very little time to adjust.
00:48 And then the ball, before you know it,
00:50 it just drops off the plate.
00:52 You know, we've seen similar in the past
00:54 with like Kevin Gaussman, who is a, you know,
00:57 an ace last year.
00:57 He struggled a little this year,
00:59 but that's more because of injury.
01:00 So yeah, you know, I think Shoda, to me,
01:04 I was kind of a little bit hesitant in the preseason
01:08 because I didn't know how his stuff would play here.
01:11 And even though like it looks great,
01:14 and I think it's gonna continue to look great,
01:16 he has had some command issues in Japan.
01:20 So I'm a little bit surprised we haven't seen that at all.
01:23 So I wouldn't be surprised if maybe at some point,
01:26 like that rears its head, maybe.
01:29 But at this point, I mean, he looks like, he looks amazing.
01:32 He looks like the best pitcher,
01:34 maybe not only the NL rookie of the year,
01:37 but possibly the Cy Young.
01:39 (upbeat music)
01:42 [MUSIC]