BALTIMORE — Tatsuya Imai’s inauspicious introduction to Major League Baseball continued on Tuesday night, prompting more questions about where the Houston Astros will go from here with their heralded free-agent addition.
In his first competitive outing since being sidelined with arm fatigue, Imai threw 59 pitches across two laborious innings during a minor-league rehab appearance with Double-A Corpus Christi. He walked three batters, threw a wild pitch, permitted six hits and surrendered five earned runs.
“Performance wasn’t great,” Astros manager Joe Espada acknowledged on Thursday morning. “But at least we checked the box (that) he did look healthy.”
No Statcast or pitch data was publicly available from Imai’s appearance, but Espada said “stuff-wise, the arm fatigue was not present, that’s for sure.” A team source said Imai hovered around 93 to 96 mph with his four-seam fastball. Before going on the injured list, Imai averaged 94.7 mph on his four-seam fastball, but struggled to command anything in his arsenal. Imai has walked 11 batters in his first 8 1/3 major-league innings.
Espada said he was scheduled to have a call with Imai prior to Thursday’s doubleheader against the Baltimore Orioles to map out his next steps.
On Tuesday, before Imai took the mound in Corpus Christi, Espada expressed cautious optimism that he would need only one minor-league rehab outing before returning to the major-league rotation.
Imai’s ensuring performance must give team officials some pause, even if Houston’s injury-ravaged rotation is starved for any sort of stability. Imai is one of three members of the Astros’ season-opening rotation on the IL, along with ace Hunter Brown and right-hander Cristian Javier.
Presuming the Astros want to keep Imai throwing on five days of rest — as he did in Nippon Professional Baseball — his next turn in the major-league rotation would be on Monday against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Daikin Park. No decisions have been made, but it’s difficult to imagine the Astros would want such a stressful assignment for a pitcher who still seems to be searching for consistency.
“We’re not concerned about the health,” Espada said. “We want to make sure the performance from (Tuesday) will not linger into his next start. We want to hear from him, see how he felt and then we’ll decide what’s next.”
Imai made just three starts before going on the IL with what the team described as arm fatigue. Both Imai and Espada said imaging revealed no structural damage to the righty’s arm. Imai’s interpreter, Shio Enomoto, said Imai’s inability “to adjust to the American lifestyle” is “probably the reason” for his arm fatigue.
This week, Espada said Imai is “in a much better place.” Imai’s longtime trainer, whose arrival in Houston was delayed due to visa issues, has now joined his entourage, which team officials hope will aid in the transition.
