The Los Angeles Dodgers lost in disappointing fashion to the Kansas City Royals on Saturday, but more concerning is the health of Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
The right-hander left the game after throwing two innings with diminished velocity. The Dodgers ended up announcing he was dealing with triceps tightness.
Yamamoto first starting feeling during the week, but said it went away after some extra rest.
“Yes, I was feeling it a couple days ago, but today, the tightness was gone,” Yamamoto said through his interpreter. “Then today’s outing, I was going out, and during the game, my tricep was tightening up. So I let coaches know, and then we decided to come out.”
Yamamoto added he began to feel it in his pregame warmups, but it was only, “a tiny bit of tightness,” and felt he could pitch through it.
“I did have tightness, and I was very aware, but that it was not that serious at that point,” Yamamoto said. “Then, as I was pitching, it started growing.”
The Dodgers originally pushed Yamamoto’s scheduled start day back from Thursday to Saturday because of soreness. However, soreness is a normal thing all pitchers deal with throughout a season, and they continue to make their starts despite it.
The tightness is the main issue, and Yamamoto said he communicated that to his coaches, but Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pushed back on that.
“Yeah, no. I mean, obviously, I wasn’t in that conversation,” Roberts said when asked if Yamamoto informed the coaches about the tightness. “I know there was no point in time where we felt that he couldn’t make the start going into today or today, because if that was the case, then he wouldn’t have made the start.
“We have conversations all the time with our pitchers. My time here, there have been starters that haven’t made the start that day because they couldn’t make the start, and we’ve had to pick up the pieces on pitch one. That wasn’t the case, to my understanding.
“So I’ll talk to Yoshinobu myself to kind of get the exact kind of communication. But again, I’ve never put a guy out there that he’s going to get hurt. And part of it is you have to trust the player and listen to the player if he feels like he can pitch. I can’t be in his body, I need the communication as well.
“So when I got word that he couldn’t keep going, that’s when I made that decision. If every starter said they were sore going into a start, they wouldn’t be starting. That’s the nature of a starting pitcher or relief pitcher. So you just want to make sure you don’t put them in harm’s way.”
Yamamoto will meet with team doctors on Sunday to determine the next step, but he expressed confidence the injury isn’t something to worry about.
“I think I’ll do a little more examination,” Yamamoto said. “But the actual feeling I’m having is not that bad.”
Yoshinobu Yamamoto likely going on injured list
Roberts said it’s a “high possibility” that Yamamoto will go on the injured list, even if it’s just for precautionary reasons. The skipper also said the team would make one or two roster moves to help the bullpen, which has been overworked in the past few days.
“Yeah, it’s going to be tough,” Roberts said of managing the bullpen. “I mean we’ll probably bring in one or two guys tomorrow and then kind of figure out how we’re going to navigate tomorrow and the forthcoming days.”
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