Imanaga shines, but Cubs offense snoozes in loss to Dodgers

Shota Imanaga rose to the occasion.

He stood in the extreme spotlight of opening the MLB regular season in his home country of Japan, facing the sport's biggest star, Shohei Ohtani.

Imanaga retired Ohtani twice and pitched four scoreless innings. But the Los Angeles Dodgers greeted Ben Brown with 3 runs in the fifth inning and beat the Cubs 4-1 on Tuesday at the Tokyo Dome. These teams will play again Wednesday, then five more times in April back in the U.S.

The story of this game was the Cubs' missing offense. There were few signs of the team that hit over .300 in spring training games in Arizona.

The Cubs took a 1-0 lead in the second inning on an RBI double by catcher Miguel Amaya. His line drive to right-center field scored Dansby Swanson, who collected the first hit of the MLB season.

After that, the Cubs got nothing. An infield single by Ian Happ was the only other hit. The Cubs drew just 1 walk, compared to 8 by the Dodgers.

Cubs newcomer Kyle Tucker is officially 0-for-4 this season. But between spring training games, the two exhibitions in Japan and Tuesday's opener, Tucker has gone 1-for-35 at the plate in a Cubs uniform. The former Astro is supposed to be the offensive star this lineup has lacked for a few years.

Before the game, Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer talked about the attention given to Japanese players like Imanaga, Ohtani, Cubs designated hitter Seiya Suzuki and Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The Cubs will face another Japanese pitcher, Roki Sasaki, on Wednesday.

“It's a lot of pressure,” Hoyer said. “For all of the players here, it's a big deal, it's Opening Day. But for them, they feel like they're hosting in their country and that's probably been a little bit exhausting. I was glad Shota did his (welcome) party on Thursday to get that out of the way early on.”

Yamamoto worked 5 innings for the Dodgers, then the Cubs couldn't manage a hit against four L.A. relievers.

“His splits (split-finger pitches) were outstanding tonight,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said of Yamamoto. “They're 93, 94 (miles per hour). He threw so many competitive splits at the bottom of the zone. It's a really tough pitch to lay off.

Imanaga did finish with 4 walks, more than he had in any of his 29 starts last season. Overall, the Cubs pitchers walked 8, allowed 7 hits and the fielders added a couple of errors.

“It's a key to this lineup, is you have to be on the attack with them,” Counsell said. “Walks are going to burn you eventually. Eight walks is too many to win a baseball game.”

Brown started the fifth inning with a strikeout, then walked Andy Pages, while Ohtani and Tommy Edman followed with singles to tie the score. Teoscar Hernandez hit a grounder to third and the Cubs got the force at second, but Jon Berti's relay to first was wild, allowing Ohtani to score the go-ahead run. Will Smith then drove in Hernandez to make it 3-1.

The Dodgers were without two of their biggest sluggers. Mookie Betts will miss both games in this series due to an illness, while Freddie Freeman was a late scratch due to rib soreness.

The top of the first inning couldn't have gone any better for Imanaga. He got Ohtani on a soft grounder to second, Edman on an infield pop up and struck out Hernandez.

Imanaga walked the first two batters in the second inning, then retired the next three on pop ups. He walked two more in the fourth, but again got out of the inning with three fly balls.

The Cubs set their roster before the game. With the rules slightly different for the games in Japan, the Cubs left starting pitchers Jameson Taillon and Matthew Boyd on the taxi squad. Matt Shaw was officially elevated to the 40-man roster, while pitcher designated for assignment. Pitcher Javier Assad went on the 15-day injured list with a left oblique strain and pitcher Daniel Palencia was sent to Triple-A.

Shaw went 0-for-4 with a pair of strikeouts and an error in his major-league debut.

“You're just playing another baseball game once it starts,” Shaw said. “Unfortunately, we didn't play an amazing game tonight, but it's baseball.”