NEW YORK – It was a matinee performance off Broadway. But Yoshinobu Yamamoto knows how to play the leading man in New York.
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Yamamoto breezed through the Yankees’ lineup in the first game of Sunday’s doubleheader, retiring 18 of the first 19 batters he faced and threw a complete game as the Dodgers won the opener 8-2.
It was a performance reminiscent of Yamamoto’s first visit to New York with the Dodgers and his only other start at Yankee Stadium (he faced them in LA during the 2024 World Series). He held the Yankees to two hits over seven scoreless innings in the best start of his rookie season two years ago.
This time, Yamamoto handled the Yankees with such ease that he threw only 102 pitches to go nine innings. The Dodgers started Yamamoto in the early half of the doubleheader, counting on him going deep in the game and saving the relief crew for the bullpen game planned for the second game. Mission accomplished. It was Yamamoto’s first MLB career complete game in the regular season – he threw two in the postseason last fall.
Yamamoto retired the first nine Yankees in order (on just 28 pitches) before he fell behind 2-and-0 to Trent Grisham leading off the fourth inning. Yamamoto’s fastball got too much of the plate and Grisham drove it 402 feet into the second deck down the right field line for a solo home run.
Yamamoto just went back to business, retiring the next nine Yankees before giving up another hit. The Yankees got to him for another run in the eighth when Andy Pages lost a fly ball in the sun.
In the first two games of this series, Dodgers pitchers have held the Yankees to just three runs on 10 hits.
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Young right-hander Cam Schlittler (the American League’s ERA leader) was supposed to be the other half of a marquee pitching matchup Sunday but the Dodgers didn’t allow him to live up to the billing.
Schlittler struck out the first four batters he faced and gave up just a lost-in-the-sun pop up for a double in the first two innings. But he threw 44 pitches to do it and the Dodgers kept grinding away at him. He only went 4 1/3 innings thanks to a pitch count affected by severe inflation. He was gone after 98 pitches.
The Dodgers got to him for two runs in the third inning. Tommy Edman singled with one out and scored from first when Shohei Ohtani torched a double 111.1 mph off the bat and to the wall in right-center field. Ohtani trotted home on his bad knee – which will prevent him from pitching indefinitely but not hitting – when Freddie Freeman dumped a two-out, two-strike RBI single into center field.
Edman scored again in the fifth when Schlittler hit him with a pitch. He went to second on a groundout then scored when Schlittler knocked the bat out of Andy Pages’ hands but Pages dropped a bloop double down the right field line, ending Schlittler’s day.
The Dodgers didn’t put the game away until the eighth inning when they scored five times against the Yankees’ bullpen.
Teoscar Hernandez drove in one when Schuemann tried to make a sliding catch on his line drive near the line. He came up empty and the ball hopped into the stands for a ground-rule double. Edman drove in two with a single and Ohtani one more with a single, then Edman scored for the third time in the game on a sacrifice fly by Freeman.
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