Imanaga's splitter set the table, then the Cubs cleared it

Chicago did not need a magic trick from Shota Imanaga. It needed a pitch Pittsburgh never got comfortable ignoring, and his splitter handled that job. He threw it 45 times out of 100 pitches, drew 29 swings, seven whiffs and 13 chases. That is not decoration. That is a starter creating doubt often enough to keep the day on his terms.

The useful part here is that we do not have to invent a meeting-room story to explain it. The public record is enough. Only 17 of those 45 splitters were in the zone, yet Pirates hitters still chased 13 that were not. When a pitcher can get that kind of expansion, the rest of the arsenal gets to work with less stress attached to it.

That matters because it gave Chicago breathing room. A lineup that is not constantly playing uphill can wait for baserunners, make the other club throw from behind and let one bad inning become a large one. Imanaga's afternoon was not about flash. It was about presenting one recurring problem often enough that Pittsburgh never got the easy version of the game.

The fourth inning is where this quit being a game of small corrections and turned into a bill Pittsburgh could not shrink. Khristian Curtis started it by hitting Carson Kelly and walking Pete Crow-Armstrong. No runs had scored yet, but those are the gifts that turn a manageable inning into a full shift.

Chicago did not waste them. Seiya Suzuki singled to right to score Kelly and move Crow-Armstrong to third. Michael Busch followed with a sacrifice fly that brought Crow-Armstrong home. Those are ordinary plays on the page and brutal ones from the mound, because the pitcher has done the hard work of getting nobody out while the offense has pushed the pressure all the way to the edge.

Bregman supplied the loud ending. Curtis got him to a 1-2 count, then the fourth pitch of the at-bat, an 86.2 mph changeup in the zone, came back 371 feet to left for a two-run home run. The scoreboard moved to 9-1, but the important part came earlier. The home run was the receipt. The hit-by-pitch and the walk were the charge.

If you want the offensive face of the day, take Alex Bregman. He reached base three times in four at-bats, went 3-for-4, doubled, homered, drove in two and scored twice. On a day with plenty of Cubs traffic, that can disappear into the group noise. It should not.

What stood out was the timing. His single put him aboard in the second. His two-run homer in the fourth pushed Chicago to 9-1. Then he doubled in the sixth and kept the line moving again. That is how one hitter keeps a big inning from being remembered as a one-off.

There is a difference between piling on and removing doubt. Bregman's line read more like the second category. The home run gets top billing because home runs always do, but the fuller point is that he kept showing up in the middle of Chicago's best offensive work.