The Launch Angle

After a cathartic 8 run sixth inning in last night’s victory over the Angels, the Houston Astros have another treat for fans today: the season debut of Tatsuya Imai, their prize offseason acquistion.

This will truly be our first look at Imai. Sure, he pitched in 3 spring training games, but none of them had TV broadcasts. Two of them were radio coverage only, and one had a webcam feed from up in the press box. Except he only pitched one inning that game, so by the time you found the link to the webcam, Imai was already done.

He sounds great. Robert Ford seemed impressed on the radio call. The box scores totaled up to good numbers: 6 innings, 3 hits, 7 strikeouts and 1 walk. I’ve got a friend of a friend who says “That slider is evil.”

TLA Editor Cody Poage wrote a great analysis of Imai shortly after his signing.

But today, we get to see for ourselves. The game airs at 1:10 CT on SCHN for the Astros television broadcast, and if you’re still not somewhere you can get eyes on it, the game will be on 790 KBME radio, as usual.

If Imai can be a solid #2 pitcher to create a 1-2 punch with Hunter Brown at the top of the rotation, that will go a long way to making the 2026 Astros competitive in the division. Great starting pitching gives you a chance, and a chance is all you ever need in any MLB game.

The Angels send right hander Jack Kochanowicz to the mound. Kochanowicz posted a 6.81 ERA across 111 innings for the Angels last year. He pitched a little better than those results, but not much, as his xFIP was 5.18 and SIERA 5.35. It’s hard to put together good outings with a K/BB ratio of 1.24.

Jose Soriano and Yusei Kikuchi are legitimately good pitchers, and they showed it against the Astros on Thursday and Friday. Yesterday, the Astros bats showed what they can do once the Angels pitching depth is tested. This game seems like one where the Astros can exploit the Angels lack of pitching depth further. This ought to be a good opportunity to get a series split before Boston comes to town. But the Astros sometimes have a habit of letting pitchers with 6+ ERAs look like Cy Young winners, so assume nothing.

As the lineups for game come out, this piece will be updated. For those of you, on the edge of your seat, I’m pretty sure Joey Loperfido will be in it. There was a lot of shock and outrage from Astros fans that Loperfido who went 2 for 3 opening night wasn’t in the lineup Friday and yesterday, but there shouldn’t be. The Astros faced Yusei Kikuchi and Reid Detmers, both lefties. Just like last year, the Astros are swimming with right-handed bats, to the point where other teams would alter their rotation schedules to avoid starting lefties against them. There will be plenty of right handed starter facing the Astros this year; so don’t worry, Loperfido will get his at-bats. But when the other team starts a southpaw, that seems like a good time to let Joey sit and have a righty teammate have a crack at it. Loperfido has a career .589 OPS against left handed pitching compared to .719 OPS against righties. He’s not Yordan.

Update: See? Loperfido in the lineup against a righty. (And Isaac Paredes’s first start of the season at second base.)

So where will you be for Imai’s debut? We hope you will be with us and the rest of the Launch Angle community! Through 3 games, the turnout has been fantastic on the TLA Discord Server for the game threads:

Here is a sample from the 8 run bottom of the 6th inning last night:

Join us again for today’s game. Just join the Discord server using this link: https://discord.gg/f6Jvrm8HV. Chat, lurk, do whatever! (But please say “hi”, so we know you’re not a bot.)

Feature photo from @astros on X, Source Link.