The Chicago Cubs needed one clean start to close out their series with the Minnesota Twins, and Shota Imanaga handed them seven innings of it. The left-hander held Minnesota to six hits and a single walk across seven scoreless frames, and the offense turned Saturday’s game into a 10-1 rout at Wrigley Field that gave Chicago two of three from the Twins.
Imanaga’s line — seven innings, six hits, no runs, one walk, four strikeouts — was built on location rather than swing-and-miss. He worked ahead in counts all afternoon and let a busy Cubs defense clean up the contact, and by the middle innings the only question left was the size of the margin.
That margin was settled early. Twins starter Zebby Matthews recorded just nine outs, charged with 10 runs (eight earned) on nine hits before he was pulled. Nico Hoerner did the heaviest lifting with a 2-for-5, four-RBI afternoon, and Alex Bregman added a two-run homer among his two hits. Michael Busch reached base four times on a 3-for-5 day, Pedro Ramirez chipped in two hits and two RBI, and Seiya Suzuki scored twice while drawing a pair of walks.
The win moves Chicago to 56-43, second in the NL Central and six games behind Milwaukee. The Cubs have leaned on their lineup depth for most of the summer while the rotation held serve; an outing like Imanaga’s, where the starter simply removes the bullpen from the equation, is the version of this team that travels best in October.
For fantasy managers, Imanaga is now a start-him-anywhere arm regardless of matchup, and his low-walk profile keeps his ratios friendly even on nights the strikeouts stay modest. Hoerner remains a steady average-and-runs producer who quietly clears counting-stat thresholds when he hits near the top of a productive order, and Bregman’s power is worth a look for anyone streaming corner infield against soft left-handed pitching.
