Posted at 8:00 AM ET. Odds are subject to change

Milwaukee -1½ +155 over Chicago Cubs

American Family Field – Milwaukee, WI

MLB Playoffs – Divisional Round, Game Two

9:00 PM ET. We’ll keep this simple — this is a straight fade of Shota Imanaga, who’s been riding the variance wave all season. The surface stats (9–8, 3.76 ERA) might fool the casuals, but dig a little deeper and it’s all smoke and mirrors. Imanaga’s been walking a tightrope with a .219 BABIP, an 82% strand rate, and a FIP north of 4.80. Those are not sustainable metrics; they’re red flags.

Now we’re into October, and the façade is beginning to crack. In his postseason start, he was tagged early yet somehow escaped worse thanks to — you guessed it — another layer of unsustainable luck. His playoff BABIP sits at .183, strand rate at 83%, and FIP ballooned to 6.39. You don’t need to be a sabermetrics disciple to see what’s coming next. The regression train is on the tracks, and it’s barreling toward Milwaukee.

Imanaga’s arsenal simply doesn’t match the stage. He leans on a low-90s fastball and induces almost no ground balls — just 29%. That’s a profile tailor-made for trouble against a contact-first, pressure-oriented lineup like Milwaukee’s. The Brewers don’t need to launch baseballs into orbit to bury you. They wear you down with plate discipline, productive outs, and relentless traffic. That’s the exact style that breaks pitchers who depend on sequencing luck and batted-ball variance.

Milwaukee’s confidence is sky-high after Game One’s 9–3 dismantling. They saw Imanaga in this same park earlier in the year and had him figured out before the bullpen even stirred. Now, with the crowd in full throat and the Cubs’ margin for error shrinking, this matchup has “correction game” written all over it.

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