Shota Imanaga

Shota Imanaga is a Gold 80 OVR Starting Pitcher card for the Cubs, part of the Live set in MLB The Show's Diamond Dynasty. He throws left-handed. The card was added to Diamond Dynasty in April 2026.

On the mound, Shota Imanaga works with a 5-pitch arsenal led by a 91 mph 4-Seam Fastball and a 88 mph Sinker. His pitching ratings include 56 Velocity, 74 Control, and 96 Break. The profile favors a movement-heavy arsenal built to miss bats.

DiamondOps grades each pitch in Shota Imanaga's arsenal: 4-Seam Fastball (S), Sweeper (S), Sinker (S), Splitter (A), and 12-6 Curve (B). 3 of them grade S-tier, which is what separates a genuine out-pitch mix from a deep-but-flat arsenal. Its strongest tunnel pairing is the 4-Seam Fastball off the Sinker, so the two share a release look. Velocity works against the card here — its 56 mph 4-Seam Fastball is slow enough to cost it in the arsenal score. Arsenal grades are the same at every difficulty — unlike a hitter's OpScore, a pitch mix does not re-weight as you climb.

On the Diamond Dynasty market, Shota Imanaga currently buys for about 420 stubs, with sell orders near 0 stubs. Over the past 7 days the price has held roughly steady. Its quick-sell value of 400 stubs sits at or above the sell price, making it quick-sell viable. DiamondOps suggests waiting for a better entry point.

OpScore is DiamondOps' composite rating of a card's in-game performance value. Shota Imanaga earns an OpScore of 69.6 on Legend difficulty, ranking #1750 among all cards and #371 among Starting Pitchers.

Live Series cards like Shota Imanaga's are the ones Diamond Radar scores: it reads a player's real MLB production and predicts what the next roster update will do to the card — the predicted rating, the tier jump, and how likely the upgrade is. Ratings only move at a roster update, and not every Live Series card is scored in a given window. Model v11: of the 358 cards it scored 70 or above in its 3 graded updates, 69% were upgraded, against 17% by chance: 4.1× better.