Troubling Astros Development Puts Tatsuya Imai’s Start Vs. Mariners In New Light

After Imai’s disastrous April 10 start against the Mariners at T-Mobile Park, we figured the strangest part of the story might just be his explanation. He said the mound felt hard. He said pitching in that kind of cool weather was unusual compared to what he was used to in Japan. In the moment, it sounded like one of those rough-adjustment nights where a pitcher just never finds his footing and everybody shrugs and moves on.

Then Saturday arrived, and suddenly it felt a lot less harmless. The Astros sent Imai back to Houston for an examination after he reported right arm fatigue.

To be fair, both things can be true. A mound can feel off. Weather can mess with a pitcher’s rhythm. A player can also be dealing with discomfort and still try to gut through it because that is what competitors do, especially early in a season and especially when they are trying to establish themselves in a new league.

Tatsuya Imai’s Wild Start Vs. Mariners Took Darker Turn With Astros Arm-Fatigue Update

Nobody needs to pretend Imai made up the mound explanation. But once the arm fatigued entered the conversation, it became harder to look back at that first inning and act like the command issues were just an environmental problem.

Imai was not just a little off. He was spraying the ball everywhere. He recorded one out, walked four hitters, hit another, threw a wild pitch that let J.P. Crawford score, and managed only 17 strikes on 37 pitches. Seattle built a three-run inning without doing any damage with their bats. That looked ugly in real time, and it looks even uglier now that the Astros are having him checked out.

Sometimes we watch an opposing pitcher implode and chalk it up to timing, pressure, or just a bad night. But sometimes the lineup is also staring at a guy whose body is not quite letting him do what he normally does. We thought maybe Seattle had just rattled a pitcher who was still adjusting to MLB. Maybe that was part of it. But the arm-fatigue news makes it feel far more likely that the Mariners caught Houston’s newest rotation piece on a night when he was not physically right. That’s not an excuse for the Astros. It’s just the more believable reading of what we watched.

There’s a little irony in all of this. Friday’s story looked like one of those “welcome to Seattle” disasters for an Astros starter. Now it reads more like Seattle happened to be the scene where a bigger Houston problem revealed itself. The Astros have already put Hunter Brown and Cristian Javier on the injured list with Grade 2 shoulder strains, and Imai became the third Houston starter in a week sent back for evaluation. Their rotation is starting to wobble in a way Mariners fans should absolutely notice.