Shota Imanaga's horrendous performance on Wednesday: Is it time to trade him?

Shota Imanaga just had his worst performance of the year against the Brewers, and many fantasy managers are wondering if it's time to move on from him. Today, we will be going through whether or not you should trade him for other pitchers. We will also be breaking down his performance on Wednesday and what happened.

During Imanaga's 4.1 inning performance on Wednesday, he had his lowest strikeout amount of the season with only one. But, he gave up seven earned runs on eight hits and one walk. In this game, his opponents had a .363 batting average. He also got the loss on this game as the Cubs lost to the Brewers 6-10. After this game, Imanaga's ERA doubled from a 0.84 to a 1.86. Nonetheless, this ERA is still great and top-10 in the league, but not as good as the league-leading 0.84 that he had before the Brewers game. 

This season, Imanaga has been very dominant and arguably the Cy Young winner throughout the first two months of the season. He has had a 5-1 record and a 1.86 ERA with an opponent batting average of .217 and a WHIP of 1.00. In 231 batters faced this season, Imanaga has only given up five home runs, and two were in his last start. He also has only given up 12 earned runs the entire season, with seven coming in the last performance. This outlier of a game has not derailed from his great start to his rookie season. 

Now the main question is; Should we trade Shota Imanaga? The short answer is no and just because of those stats that we just mentioned. Imanaga is currently ranked first in the NL Cy Young ballot, which means we will take Shota over every single NL pitcher, and also we would take him over any pitcher in baseball right now. Everyone has a bad game, and we're just lucky that Imanaga's came later than every other pitcher. Be on the lookout for Shota Imanaga in our early MVP, Cy Young, and the month of May All-Pitchers team. 

Article written by Jackson Corona