If you haven’t seen Tatsuya Imai’s slider yet, tonight is a good night to tune in.
Houston’s newest starter throws one of the most unusual pitches in baseball—a slider that breaks the opposite direction of virtually every other slider in the world. For a right-handed pitcher, a normal slider breaks from right to left. Imai’s goes the other way. It breaks from left to right, averaging six inches of horizontal movement to his arm side. Some of his best ones break over a foot in that direction. To put that in perspective: the next closest pitchers in baseball with any arm-side slider movement have just one inch. Imai has six. It isn’t even close.
Tonight that pitch gets its latest test when the Astros open a four-game series against the Seattle Mariners at T-Mobile Park. The defending AL West champions are 4-9, on a five-game losing streak, and in the middle of one of the more puzzling offensive droughts in the early going. Seattle’s pitching staff has been outstanding—third-best ERA in the majors—but the bats have been nearly nonexistent. The Mariners are last in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging, and contact rate. It is the mirror image of Houston’s situation—a team with a functional offense and a pitching staff that has been stretched to its limit.
Imai brings an electric strikeout rate and a walk rate that has been anything but, facing a Mariners lineup that has almost certainly never seen a pitch like his slider before. His counterpart tonight is Emerson Hancock, who has been one of the best-kept secrets in the American League this April, just one earned run allowed in nearly 13 innings, with a .146 opponent batting average. He won’t be easy. But this Astros lineup, which leads the majors in runs scored and on-base percentage, has a way of making things difficult for pitchers too.
Oh—and before first pitch, T-Mobile Park will unveil a statue of Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki outside the ballpark. Whatever your rooting interest, that’s worth acknowledging. There’s only one Ichiro.
First pitch is at 8:40 p.m. CT on Space City Home Network.
Heading to Daikin Park soon? Check the Astros promotions schedule before your next game.