After another complete game victory in Game 2 of the World Series on Saturday night, is the Japanese right-hander approaching – or has he already reached – ace status?
Stand down, Dodger fans. No reason for fear. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is here.
Whatever pearl-clutching resulted from Friday night’s 11-4 pasting by the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 1 of the 2025 World Series was short-lived. Yamamoto was able to do in Saturday night’s series-evening 5-1 Dodgers victory what Blake Snell couldn’t the night before.
Did someone say complete games are passé? Not in this case. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts might be inclined to pull other starters at the 100-pitch mark, but for the second straight start he left Yamamoto alone, and the right-hander from Bizen, Okayama Prefecture, delivered again with a 105-pitch complete game in the Dodgers’ 5-1 victory that might have served as a response to the reputation of the Blue Jays as a team that gets the bat on the ball consistently.
Or it was a response to that Game 1 drubbing. Or maybe just a stubborn resolve that if something bad was to happen, it wouldn’t be on his watch.
“Needless to say, today’s game, we had to win,” Yamamoto said through his interpreter, Yoshihiro Sonoda. “So that’s just how I treated this game.”
That’s not as easy as he made it sound.
“Outstanding, uber competitive, special,” Roberts said. “Yeah, 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.
“… You know, he’s pitched in huge ball games in Japan. He’s pitched in the WBC. Players that have the weight of a country on their shoulders, that’s pressure. So I just feel that part of his DNA is to just perform at a high level in big spots and control his heartbeat and just continue to make pitches.
“I mean, he could have went another 30, 40 pitches tonight.”
Wouldn’t that have been a shock to all of those critics who regularly accuse Roberts of being too quick with the hook.
Yamamoto fanned eight with a game-high 17 swings and misses, allowed four hits and retired the last 20 hitters he faced in becoming the first to pitch a complete game in the World Series in 10 years, or since the Kansas City Royals’ Johnny Cueto in 2015.
