Can Shota Imanaga bounce back after his first tough start?

The answer, as is so often the case in these situations, likely lies somewhere in the middle of those two extremes. 

There was absolutely no way Imanaga was going to carry a sub-1.00 ERA much farther than he already had, but there's no reason to believe that seven-run outings will be the norm or that he can't settle into high-caliber form for extended periods of time. 

So what happened against Milwaukee? One tidbit is that the performance dropped Imanaga's whiff rate from the 86th percentile to the 76th, without his chase rate changing too much. His walk rate also didn't really go anywhere, but his strikeouts fell off a cliff as he only punched out one Brewer.

This all indicates that Imanaga's control was still there, as was his velocity. He was throwing the same pitches, but they were getting hit at a higher rate. There are definitely positive and negative takeaways from that conclusion. 

The good is that he hasn't suddenly stopped throwing the pitches that made him successful. The bad is that those same pitches didn't have the same effect against Milwaukee as they have in the past.

The Brewers didn't magically figure out how to crush the pitches that other MLB hitters couldn't in the past, but over Imanaga's first nine games, they were probably being swung at and missed at an unsustainable rate. All we can do is wait and watch to see just what the reasonable rate ends up being. 

Our next look at Imanaga will be on June 4, as he looks for a big bounce-back start against the rival Chicago White Sox.