Chicago White Sox Crush Cubs Pitcher Shota Imanaga In 12-5 Victory

CHICAGO –– Will Venable and the White Sox knew exactly how to approach Cubs starter Shota Imanaga. It was just a matter of executing their plan.

“It'll be to do everything we can to negotiate the fastball and be ready to handle the fastball and everything that means,” Venable said pregame. “And then be ready to hit. He's going to attack us in the zone and we've got to be ready to be aggressive."

And aggressive they were, early and often. In a 12-5 win on Friday at Rate Field, the White Sox pounded a season-high 18 hits, their most since Aug. 12, 2024, including 12 off Imanaga, a career-high allowed by the left-hander. They knocked him out of the game after three-plus innings, tied for his career-low, and racked up seven earned runs against the 2024 NL Cy Young fifth-place finisher.

“Our game plan was [Imanaga] couldn't throw a fastball over the plate, and if he did, we were gonna be on it,” Austin Slater said. “And so what if we swing over a couple splitters. But we weren't gonna let him just throw fastballs by us.”

The White Sox lead MLB with 61 runs scored and a plus-33 run differential since the All-Star break, as they’ve gone 6-1 against the Pirates, Rays and Cubs. They have four games with 10-plus runs since the All-Star break. They reached that mark just four times in the first 97 games of the season and just twice during the entire 2024 season. Ask the White Sox if they saw this coming to begin the second half, and the responses are mixed.

“I don’t think so, really,” Venable said. “I don’t know if anyone saw this coming. We’re certainly pleased with the effort these guys have put in the whole year. And now to get the results to follow up with that has been nice for our group.”

“I said this – we were on a mission when we came back from the All-Star break,” Chase Meidroth said. “We are playing together and play for each other. This has been a long time coming I feel like. It’s been really fun to put it all together this last week. We have to keep things rolling. A week is just a short part of the season.”

“I don’t know the other guys. I just rest at my house. Just chilling,” Edgar Quero said.

Though the White Sox have been on fire over the last week, they faced perhaps their biggest challenge post-All-Star break against Imanaga. He has been tremendous since the Cubs signed him to a four-year, $53 million contract out of Japan before the 2024 season. Entering Friday’s start, Imanaga’s 2.75 ERA ranked fifth among MLB pitchers with at least 240 innings behind only Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal, Chris Sale and Zack Wheeler – three Cy Young winners.

Imanaga thrives on command, typically being able to place the ball on the corners with fastballs, splitters, sweepers and curveballs. But he’s not one to blow away hitters with velocity, averaging just 90.9 mph on his four-seam fastball, a noticeable tick below the 93.9 mph average by MLB left-handers. So as Imanaga’s fastball averaged just 89.1 mph and bottomed out at 86.8 mph –– and he didn’t have his usual precision around the edges – he got hit hard.

Every White Sox player in the starting lineup recorded a hit, including 10 batted balls with exit velocities over 100 mph against Imanaga. That began with their first at-bat of the game. Imanaga laid an 89.3 mph fastball over the heart of the plate, and leadoff hitter Chase Meidroth pummeled it 370 feet to left field for his third home run of the season. Coincidentally, his first career home run came in the leadoff spot against the Cubs on May 17 at Wrigley Field, though it was off Matthew Boyd.

"Whenever Chase goes deep, I think everyone gets really excited,” Slater said. “Not that he can't, I think it just hasn't happened a whole lot. He's our spark plug and when he goes we go."

Slater, Quero, Miguel Vargas and Lenyn Sosa rattled off four singles in the following five at-bats, three of which came against splitters, to put the White Sox ahead 3-0. Colson Montgomery led off the second inning with a 380-foot home run off an Imanaga fastball that, again, caught far too much of the plate. That marked Montgomery’s third home run in the last three games, becoming the first White Sox rookie to do so since Daniel Palka from Sept. 16-19, 2018.

Imanaga has given up just six home runs against left-handed hitters in his career, compared to 32 against right-handed hitters, which made Montgomery’s blast all the more impressive.

“He just continues to take good swings at good pitches,” Venable said of Montgomery. “You just look at a guy who’s making good decisions at the plate and putting himself on time and a good spot to get good swings off also. He’s got it all clicking right now.”

Three singles in the next four at-bats from Meidroth, Quero and Benintendi made it 5-0 White Sox after two innings. That alone topped the White Sox season-long average of 3.7 runs per game, but they were far from finished.

Slater slugged the third leadoff home run in four innings, crushing an Imanaga fastball 420 feet to dead center field with Friday’s team-high 108.8 mph exit velocity to put the White Sox ahead 6-0. Slater had been productive against left-handed pitching entering the game, hitting .254 with an .852 OPS, and he saw Imanaga especially well. He finished 2-for-5 with three runs, an RBI and three batted balls over 104 mph.

Quero followed with a double, and that was it for Imanaga. In one of his worst starts across 43 major league outings, Imanaga finished with three-plus innings, 12 hits, seven earned runs, zero walks, two strikeouts and three home runs allowed in 85 pitches. His only start with more earned runs came on June 21, 2024, when he gave up 10 in an 11-1 loss to the Mets.

Imanaga did not have anything near his best stuff, but that didn’t mean the White Sox bats would cool down against the Cubs’ bullpen. Facing former White Sox pitcher Chris Flexen, Sosa added a run in the fourth with a sacrifice fly, and in the next at-bat Mike Tauchman belted his sixth home run of the year. Singles from Quero and Vargas made it an 11-0 lead in the fifth.

“The big word is belief. I believe in the guy behind me and that guy believes in the next guy,” Meidroth said. “All 26 guys we have in here. It takes everybody to win each night. There’s a lot of belief and trust. That’s huge. You hit as a team and as nine guys so that’s what we’ve shown in the last week. It’s how you win games.”

Perhaps underappreciated during the White Sox offensive barrage was another strong outing from Adrian Houser. After 6.2 scoreless innings, the Cubs finally got on the board with a three-run home run from Reese McGuire. Vidal Brujan singled in the next at-bat, which knocked out the White Sox starter.

“The only one pitch I want back is the home run ball,” Houser said. “I told myself in my head, don't throw the fastball here, but just went with it thinking I could get a ground ball with the way the sinker was going tonight. Overall we were on the same page, we were attacking. We were making them hit our pitches and swing at our pitches and I think that was what we needed to do.”

Despite the sour ending, Houser recorded his ninth quality start in 11 tries after signing with the White Sox in May out of Triple-A Round Rock. He faced the minimum through the first eight batters, and the Cubs didn’t reach second base until the fourth inning. Unlike the consistent hard contact Imanaga allowed, the Cubs only batted four balls over with over a 100 mph exit velocity against Houser.

He finished with 6.2 innings, five hits, three earned runs, three walks and three strikeouts. That was especially impressive, given the Cubs entered Friday ranked second in MLB with 5.2 runs per game. Since his White Sox debut on May 20, Houser ranks eighth among qualified pitchers in MLB with a 2.10 ERA.

That performance has put Houser in trade rumors ahead of the July 31 deadline, but he remains focused on the present. His one-month-old daughter attended her first game on Friday, along with several other family members. He broke down in tears during his postgame press conference, reflecting on the journey he's gone through from Triple-A to the White Sox and now potentially a new team.

"Being away from them so much. It's been a tough year for us, with the bouncing around and being away from each other," Houser said. "But we're fighting through it and having them here means a lot."

"I'm going to go have a good time with them. If a trade happens it's out of my control. So right now I'm focused on Adrian Houser-White Sox and that's how I'm treating it going day by day. Whatever's in the future is out of my control. For right now I'm a White Sox and I'm going to keep pitching like that and that's how I'm going to go about my business."

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