TORONTO — Caulk and weather stripping are good ways to weather-proof your house in these parts. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the best way the Dodgers have found to bullpen-proof a game.
Yamamoto pitched his second consecutive complete game of the postseason, holding a Toronto Blue Jays lineup that scored 11 runs in Game 1 to just one run on four hits as the Dodgers won Game 2 of the World Series, 5-1, on Saturday night and sent the best-of-seven series to Los Angeles even at one game apiece.
Game 3 is Monday at 5 p.m. PT, with Tyler Glasnow scheduled to start for the Dodgers and Max Scherzer for the Blue Jays.
“It’s amazing,” Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said of Yamamoto’s back-to-back complete games. “There’s not enough adjectives, superlatives, anything you wanna say. To do it in back-to-back starts, in what? Less than 110 pitches (105)?”
Yamamoto finished Saturday’s game by retiring 20 consecutive Blue Jays batters in the first World Series complete game since Kansas City’s Johnny Cueto did it against the New York Mets in Game 2 in 2015.
“Didn’t know it was 20, so that’s pretty cool, too,” Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior said.
No pitcher had thrown consecutive complete games in the postseason since Arizona Diamondbacks ace Curt Schilling, who tossed three in a row in the 2001 National League Division Series and NLCS. No Dodgers pitcher had done it since Orel Hershiser in the 1988 World Series.
“To be honest, I’m not sure about the history, but I’m very happy about what I did today,” Yamamoto said through his interpreter.
No one was happier than Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who was able to spend the entire game seated comfortably in the dugout and not trudging out to the mound to make a pitching change with his fingers crossed.
“Outstanding, uber competitive, special,” Roberts said. “He was just locked in tonight. It was one of those things – he said before the series, losing is not an option, and he had that look tonight.”
Not right away.
The first batter reached base in each of the first three innings against Yamamoto. He had to work out of a first-and-third jam with no outs in the first inning. He struck out Vladimir Guerrero Jr., got Alejandro Kirk on a soft liner to first base and froze Daulton Varsho with a full-count curveball for a called strike three.
It took 23 pitches for him to get through the first inning. No one was thinking about a complete game then.
“After that first inning, I was thinking six,” said Roberts, who couldn’t have felt good about making his next call to the bullpen after Game 1’s nine-run explosion. “I felt he would find a way to get through six. It’s an aggressive swinging team. I thought the stuff was good, so I felt that he could manage to get through six. Then the pitch count kind of stayed where it needed to stay. And then for me, I just didn’t see anything fall off as far as his delivery and the execution.”
In the third inning, though, he hit George Springer with a pitch to start the inning then gave up a line drive off the wall in left field by Guerrero. Guerrero was held to a single but Springer went to third on the hit and scored on a sacrifice fly by Kirk to tie the score.
That was the first of the 20 Blue Jays retired in order by Yamamoto. An even more important number – he was able to do it on just 79 pitches through seven innings, keeping the Dodgers’ flame-throwing (not that way) bullpen quiet.
“I mean, his heartbeat – honestly, he’s in control the whole time,” Prior said. “I said it last time with Milwaukee (Yamamoto’s complete-game win in Game 2 of the NLCS), he gave up the first-pitch home run – settled in, never seemed flustered, never seemed rattled by it. Just kept making pitches, going pitch-to-pitch.
“Same thing tonight. He made two really good pitches to get 0-2 on Springer in the first at-bat, tried to elevate one more time. Springer obviously put a good swing on it. It was midline. And then he makes another really good pitch to Lukes and gives up the flare. Just kept making pitches. We’ve seen that in the past from him. But he’s just really determined to stay disciplined to his process, and really just unwavering. Just, ‘I’m gonna make a pitch and I’m gonna execute,’ and he’s gonna gather the information and go on to the next pitch. And from then on, he was in pretty much control the whole time. His emotional, heartbeat, however you want to say, just doesn’t seem fazed. And given the situation, given the magnitude of these games, given what we were coming off of last night, it’s remarkable. It really is. Really impressive.”
Game 1 made offensive history – the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history and the biggest single inning (the Blue Jays’ nine-run sixth inning) in a World Series game since 1968. The Game 2 starters – Yamamoto and Kevin Gausman – just made offense history for most of the night.
The Dodgers got on the board in the first inning with the kind of at-bats they’ve been hoping to see more often. Freeman fouled off three pitches at 2-and-2 before lashing a double into the right-field corner. Smith followed with a two-out RBI single.
They didn’t see any more of those kind of at-bats for a long time. Gausman retired the next 17 Dodgers in order.
“He was pitching really well,” Smith said of the Blue Jays’ starter. “He was really locating the fastball at the bottom. His split was really on. He threw a few sliders, maybe not as many as we thought. He was just mixing his fastball and splits. Those were tough at-bats.”
Smith finally ended Gausman’s run when he got a 3-and-2 fastball on the inner half and crushed it, sending it 404 feet down the left field line for a solo home run. Two batters later, Muncy got a 2-and-2 fastball on the outside corner and sent it in the same direction for an opposite-field homer (his fourth in 21 career at-bats against Gausman).
The Dodgers’ offense did what it could to make Yamamoto even more comfortable with two more runs in the eighth on singles by Andy Pages and Shohei Ohtani, a run-scoring wild pitch and Smith’s third RBI of the night when he hit into a force out but beat out the double-play attempt.
After that 23-pitch first inning, Yamamoto threw more than a dozen pitches in an inning just twice more – during the Blue Jays’ one-run third inning (13) and while striking out the side in the eighth. Roki Sasaki briefly got up in the Dodgers’ bullpen but there was no debate about letting Yamamoto finish what he started.
“There was no discussion,” Prior said. “We talk every inning. Probably from the sixth inning on it was more like, ‘All good?’ It was a very simple question. ‘Yes,’ and then we just move on.”
Yamamoto struck out eight and walked none, relying on his splitter (34 of his 105 pitches) but also getting five of his 17 swing-and-misses with his curveball.
“It was his night. He executed every pitch,” Guerrero said.
Yamamoto has emerged as a big-time postseason performer. The Dodgers have won seven of his eight postseason starts since he joined the team last year.
“As he was going along in the fifth, sixth, seventh inning, I was just trying to think about how poised and in control of the game, what he’s trying to do,” Freeman said. “It’s four or five pitches and it feels like he could hit a flea with it. He can throw it wherever he wants. Sets up hitters. Understands hitters’ swings. He’s just incredible. We saw it last year when he came back from injury. He was doing it in the postseason then, too. Just stayed healthy all year (in 2025). So you get to see it a little bit more.”
Originally Published:
