SACRAMENTO, California – Houston Astros rookie Tatsuya Imai got his first win in MLB on Saturday after throwing 5-2\/3 shutout innings in an 11-0 rout of the Athletics, while the Chicago White Sox’s Munetaka Murakami reached 250 career home runs.<\/p>\n
After getting a no-decision in his testing debut on March 29, Imai (1-0) showed what he is capable of by striking out nine while scattering three hits, all singles, in a commanding 94-pitch effort at Sutter Health Park.<\/p>\n
“First and foremost, I pitched trying to control my breaking balls and fastballs to where I wanted them,” said Imai, who walked two. “I was throwing accepting that the velocity might go down.”<\/p>\n
Imai gave up a single to open the first and third but ended both innings after fanning two. His sliders proved especially effective as he got all his nine strikeouts swinging, backed by 10 runs scored by his teammates by the sixth.<\/p>\n
Imai joined the Seibu Lions in 2017 out of high school as their top draft pick and earned double-digit wins for the past three seasons. He led the Pacific League with 187 strikeouts in 2024 and moved to the Astros this offseason via the posting system on a three-year, $54 million deal.<\/p>\n
Having homered in his first three MLB games before none in the past four, Murakami belted a two-run shot in the sixth off Toronto Blue Jays reliever Brendon Little (0-2) to give the White Sox a 3-2 lead at Rate Field in their 6-3 win.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old, who also hit a sacrifice fly in the first, reached 250 pro homers faster than Sadaharu Oh, whose 868 home runs is a Nippon Professional Baseball record.<\/p>\n
“It’s a benchmark number and I’m happy to have made it,” Murakami said. “Mr. Oh hit so many more home runs and I don’t feel I’ve matched or surpassed him. My baseball career continues and I’ll look to add one homer at a time.”<\/p>\n
Former Yakult Swallow Murakami hit 56 home runs to set a Japanese-born player record in NPB during the 2022 season, when he became the youngest Triple Crown winner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO, California – Houston Astros rookie Tatsuya Imai got his first win in MLB on Saturday after throwing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2389],"tags":[42,5,139,54,3211,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-664177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-astros","8":"tag-astros","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-houston","11":"tag-houston-astros","12":"tag-houstonastros","13":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}