Cubs Insider Believes Shota Imanaga Might Not Return

The Chicago Cubs have plenty of decisions to make this offseason. 

They have to decide what to do with their free agent class. Their long free-agent list includes Ian Happ, Seiya Suzuki, Tyrone Taylor, Shota Imanaga, Kevin Gausman, Michael Conforto, Carson Kelly (mutual option), Matthew Boyd (mutual option), and Clay Holmes (player option).

The expectation is that the Cubs will lose a lot of those players from this past season. It’s impossible to re-sign them all, and the front office might not even want some of them back. That’s at least what Cubs insiders Patrick Mooney and Sahadev Sharma of The Athletic believe. 

In Mooney and Sharma’s recent podcast episode on the North Side Territory, they believe that Imanaga might have thrown his last pitch for the Cubs. 

“Watching Imanaga’s time with the Cubs, it’s just clear they don’t trust him to that level,” Mooney said. “They really respect his competitiveness, his adaptability. His performance was very good to great over most of the past three seasons. It just didn’t quite build to that next level that seemed possible when he was a Cy Young Award contender in the first half of his rookie year.”

It seems like the writing may be on the wall for Imanaga after another up-and-down season. The Japanese left-hander didn’t have a bad pitching season by any means, finishing with a 3.77 ERA, 1.096 WHIP, and 174 strikeouts over 174 ⅓ innings pitched. 

However, this was statistically his worst pitching season since signing with the Cubs before the 2024 season. 

Imanaga posted a 2.91 ERA, 1.021 WHIP, and 174 strikeouts in 173 ⅓ innings pitched in his rookie season. That year, the southpaw made his first All-Star appearance, finished fourth in National League Rookie of the Year voting, and finished fifth in National League Cy Young voting. 

Imanaga then regressed slightly during the 2025 season. He wasn’t as sharp on the mound, with a 3.73 ERA and 117 strikeouts across 144 ⅔ innings pitched. His strikeout rate dropped drastically, and the Cubs couldn’t even rely on him to pitch consistently in the postseason. 

In 2026, he was more like his 2025 version than his rookie-year version. He pitched better in the final month of the season (2.25 ERA), but his 4.17 ERA in the first half wasn’t what the team hoped for from one of its top starters. 

Imanaga will now head to free agency after playing on the qualifying offer in 2026. It remains unclear whether the Cubs will bring back the southpaw, though Mooney believes his time in Chicago may be over.