The Dodgers Hope Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s Fantastic Run Can Push Them To Game 7

For the first time all season — indeed, the first time since Game 5 of last year’s Division Series against the Padres — the Dodgers are facing elimination. A win on Friday night in Toronto will continue their season, forcing Game 7 of the World Series, while a loss will end it, making the Blue Jays champions for the first time in 32 years. Since their 18-inning victory in Game 3 late Monday night local time (and Tuesday morning for much of the continental United States and Canada) on Freddie Freeman’s walk-off home run, the Dodgers have looked as though they’re sleepwalking. They were thoroughly outplayed by the Blue Jays in both Games 4 and 5, with rough performances by their starters, relievers, hitters, and fielders. For Game 6, Los Angeles will turn to Yoshinobu Yamamoto, hoping he can continue his tremendous October run and extend the season for one more night.

During the National League Championship Series, the Dodgers rotation absolutely dominated the Brewers, posting a 0.63 ERA and 1.88 FIP in 28 2/3 innings, but in the World Series it’s been a different story, as those starters have been touched for a 4.88 ERA and 4.55 FIP in 31 1/3 innings. To be fair, some of those runs are attributable to manager Dave Roberts’ trying to squeeze a few more outs from Blake Snell in Games 1 and 5 and Shohei Ohtani in Game 4 instead of handing clean innings over to an increasingly erratic bullpen. The damage from those attempts — both starters combined to record only two outs (both by Snell in Game 5) and bequeath seven baserunners, all of whom later scored, to three different relievers — blew those three games wide open. Yamamoto not only has produced the Dodgers’ only quality start of the series, but also the only relief from their relievers, as the 27-year-old righty spun a four-hit complete game on 105 pitches in Game 2, his second time going the distance in as many turns. If that wasn’t bad-ass enough, he warmed up in the top of the 18th inning of Game 3, ready to relieve Will Klein if needed.

As you’ve probably seen by now, Yamamoto’s three-hit complete game in Game 2 of the NLCS was the first by a postseason starter since the Astros’ Justin Verlander went the distance against the Yankees in Game 2 of the 2017 ALCS. Yamamoto is just the sixth starter with multiple complete games in a single postseason during the Wild Card era, and the first in 24 years to go back-to-back at least once.

Prior to Schilling, you have to dial back to 1992, when the Braves’ Tom Glavine — the last to have such a streak incorporating at least one World Series start (both, in his case) — and the Pirates’ Tim Wakefield each had two complete games. Before that, you have to go back to 1988, when the Dodgers’ Orel Hershiser had three straight, including two World Series starts.

Yamamoto is no stranger to complete games. While he has yet to throw one in his 48 regular-season starts with the Dodgers, he totaled 14 during his final five seasons (2019–23) with the Orix Buffaloes of the Japanese Pacific League, with a high of six (including four shutouts) in 2021, his first of three straight seasons winning both the league’s MVP and the Eiji Sawamura Award, the NPB Cy Young equivalent (given to one pitcher for both Japanese leagues, as the Cy Young was in MLB from 1956–66).

Not all of Yamamoto’s postseason starts have been complete games, or even gems. He was very good in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series against the Reds, allowing just two runs (both unearned) on four hits and two walks in 6 2/3 innings, striking out nine along the way. Those runs were unearned because Austin Hays’ fly ball, which would have been the third out of the first inning, clanked off right fielder Teoscar Hernández’s glove, and Sal Stewart followed with a two-run single. In his only dud of the postseason — and the Dodgers’ only October loss prior to the World Series — Yamamoto scuffled against the Phillies in Game 3 of the Division Series, allowing three runs on six hits and one walk in four innings before getting the hook.

Still, it’s tough to complain when Yamamoto has pitched to a 1.57 ERA and 2.86 FIP in 28 2/3 innings during this postseason. Only three other pitchers with at least 10 innings have posted lower ERAs, namely Cam Schlittler (1.26 ERA in 14 1/3 innings), Jacob Misiorowski (1.50 ERA in 12 innings), and Tyler Glasnow (1.50 ERA in 18 innings). That trio has combined for five starts and four relief appearances; it takes two of those pitchers to approximate the number of innings Yamamoto has thrown this fall.

This is exactly the kind of performance the Dodgers had hoped for when they signed Yamamoto to a record-setting 12-year, $325 million contract in December 2023. He was very good last season, posting a 3.00 ERA and 2.61 FIP during the regular season, but made just 18 starts totaling 90 innings, missing nearly three months due to a rotator cuff strain. He had his ups and downs during the Dodgers’ championship run (3.86 ERA and 4.77 FIP in 18 2/3 innings), though the high points — five shutout innings in Game 5 of the Division Series against the Padres, 6 1/3 innings of one-hit, one-run ball against the Yankees in Game 2 of the World Series — were a huge part of his team’s triumph.

This season, Yamamoto not only avoided the injured list, but he also made the NL All-Star team. He posted a 0.90 ERA through his first seven starts, had 10 starts of at least five innings with no runs allowed (tied with Drew Rasmussen for third in the majors behind Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal, who each had 12), and had a major league-high six starts in which he allowed just one hit. That count includes his September 6 start against the Orioles at Camden Yards, a game that showed off both the best and the worst of the 2025 Dodgers. Yamamoto matched his season high of 10 strikeouts while no-hitting Baltimore for 8 2/3 innings before Jackson Holliday hit a wall-scraping solo homer. After Roberts pulled him, Blake Treinen allowed all three batters he faced to reach (double, hit-by-pitch, wild pitch, walk) in the first game of what’s become an epic slide into misery, and then for the second night in a row, Tanner Scott allowed a walk-off hit, in this case a two-run single by Emmanuel Rivera. So it goes.

In 30 starts totaling 173 2/3 innings, Yamamoto ranked second in the NL in ERA (2.49), third in strikeout rate (29.4%), fifth in both FIP (2.94) and WAR (5.0), and sixth in strikeout-walk differential (20.8%). While he hasn’t missed as many bats in the postseason, he’s been more efficient, trimming his pitches per plate appearance by walking less than half as many batters, and cutting his home run rate as well:

Yamamoto’s lower walk and home run rates have helped to offset his lower strikeout rate. He’s also shaved nearly 50 points off his BABIP, though a closer look at his Statcast numbers shows a contact profile very similar to the regular season:

Yamamoto is actually allowing barrels and hard-hit balls with greater frequency than in the regular season, which when combined with his lower strikeout rate, should spell trouble. He’s survived and even thrived because the gap between his actual and expected numbers on those batted balls has been much wider than during the regular season. Some of that is attributable to the Dodgers’ defense, which ranked eighth out of 12 in my evaluation of playoff teams’ defenses and has had some significant lapses this October (including the aforementioned dropped fly ball by Hernández); nonetheless, Los Angeles fielders have largely risen to the occasion behind Yamamoto.

A closer look shows that the actual vs. expected gap has been especially wide on hard-hit balls, those with exit velocities of 95 mph or higher, and even higher on hard-hit balls to the batter’s pull side:

Taking this table together with the one above, we have a simple through-line: Based on the contact Yamamoto gave up during the regular season, batters fell 33 points short of their .315 xSLG, but in the postseason, that gap has expanded to a 145-point shortfall on a .385 xSLG. On hard-hit balls, they fell 30 points short of their .796 xSLG during the regular season, but in the postseason, that gap is up to 283 points below an .873 xSLG. And on hard-hit pulled balls — about a third of his hard-hit balls, and about 15% of his batted balls — where they exceeded their .756 xSLG by 86 points during the regular season, they’ve fallen 450 points shy of their postseason 1.117 xSLG. We’re in small-sample territory throughout this array, so those postseason divides are increasingly extreme and primed for regression, but they’re what’s gotten Yamamoto and the Dodgers to this point.

In Game 2, the Blue Jays had 10 hard-hit balls against Yamamoto, produced by seven of the team’s 10 batters (including pinch-hitter Bo Bichette) — all but righty Isiah Kiner-Falefa (for whom Bichette pinch-hit in the seventh) and lefties Andrés Giménez and Daulton Varsho. Yet of those 10 hard-hit balls, only George Springer’s first-inning double, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s third-inning single (a 113.9-mph rocket that ricocheted off the left field wall), and Alejandro Kirk’s sacrifice fly ended up helping Toronto’s cause. The Blue Jays hit .222 and slugged .333 on those hard-hit balls, where they could have been expected to hit .504 and slug .955. That’s a lot of bullets dodged.

Though already baked into the expected stats, there are a couple of things mitigating the extra amount of hard contact Yamamoto has surrendered. For one, his groundball rate has bumped up from 52.8% during the regular season to 55.1% in the postseason, with his groundball-to-fly ball ratio increasing from 1.69 to 1.95. Meanwhile, his pull rate has dropped from 37.0% to 31.6%, and his pulled air rate has held pretty steady, from 12.1% in the regular season (which placed him in the 91st percentile) to 12.6% in the postseason. And while he’s been less effective with runners on base (.292 wOBA allowed) than during the regular season (.256 wOBA), he’s cut his share of plate appearances with runners on from 65% in the regular season to 54% in the playoffs. Keeping the bases clear has been crucial to his success.

The breadth and effectiveness of Yamamoto’s arsenal is what’s enabled him to pitch deep into games. This is a pitcher who has six offerings with positive run values, according to Statcast:

During the postseason, Yamamoto has remained fairly consistent with regards to his pitch mix, using his entire arsenal against righties but ditching the sinker and slider against lefties. The main difference is that he’s dialed back the usage of his four-seamer against batters of both hands because it’s been knocked around (.342 wOBA, .416 xwOBA), and instead has relied more upon his curveball, which has been his most effective pitch this postseason (.104 wOBA, .199 xwOBA, 32.6% whiff) — even more effective than his splitter (.134 wOBA, .260 xwOBA, 32.7% whiff), which gave batters more trouble during the regular season. He had a substantial reverse platoon split during the regular season (as was the case in 2024), but he’s more than evened that out in the playoffs.

Prior to Game 1, I wrote about Snell’s tremendous run through the first three rounds while cautioning that the Blue Jays’ aggressive, contact-oriented approach at the plate could lead to enough seeing-eye hits (or ambush home runs) to change his game plan. Not only has his BABIP jumped from .154 through his first three postseason turns to .367 in the World Series, but he surrendered back-to-back homers on two of his first three pitches (all four-seamers) in Game 5. Great game-planning and regression sometimes catch up to even the best of ’em. The Dodgers have to hope that for one more night, Yamamoto can avoid those perils.