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When Shota Imanaga first broke out the slow version of his curveball, pitching coach Tommy Hottovy’s stomach dropped.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what happened? Is he hurt?’” Hottovy said in a conversation with the Sun-Times Tuesday.
It was a fun anecdote as Hottovy told it five days earlier. But at the moment, it was downright confusing. The pitch looped in at 54 mph, a drastic change of speeds. Catcher Miguel Amaya was equally perplexed. He’d called a normal curveball, which Imanaga throws at 73 mph.