The Houston Astros are doing that thing again. You know the one. The thing where they lurk in the division race, get hot at the right time, and make everybody else nervous.
Thursday night in Detroit, they took the series opener from the Tigers 2-1. It wasn’t pretty offensively. But it didn’t have to be. Not with Tatsuya Imai on the mound.
Imai carved through Detroit’s lineup like he had something to prove. Six innings. Zero runs. Two hits. One walk. Ten strikeouts. The guy made Tigers hitters look like they were swinging underwater.
This is the same Imai who got shelled for five earned runs in two-thirds of an inning against Kansas City on June 12. That was bad. Like, really bad. But since then? He’s walked exactly one batter across two starts while punching out 21. That’s not a rebound. That’s a transformation.
The numbers still need work
Look, his season ERA is still sitting at 5.36. Nobody’s pretending that’s good. But the Astros rotation is banged up. Cristian Javier and Lance McCullers Jr. are both out. Houston needs somebody to step up, and right now Imai is that somebody.
The wins are starting to pile up too. The Astros have won three in a row now and sit at 40-43. That’s not exactly the top of the world, but they’re only 1.5 games behind the Mariners after Seattle dropped one to Pittsburgh. The AL West is wide open.
Fans online noticed the shift. A few pointed out that Imai’s stuff looks sharper lately — better command of his splitter, more confidence in his fastball up in the zone. The team hasn’t said anything official about mechanical adjustments, but it’s hard to argue with the results.
What’s funny is that this all started to turn around right when people started writing the Astros off. They were under .500. The rotation was a mess. And now here comes Imai, throwing six scoreless innings in a tight ballgame in July.
Is this sustainable? Who knows. But for a team that’s been waiting for someone to grab a rotation spot and run with it, Imai is doing exactly that. One start at a time.
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