Yoshinobu Yamamoto made the fifth start of his MLB career, and turned in some mixed results overall, showing flashes of brilliance but also enduring early struggles.
The first inning has been the main issue for Yamamoto, which was highlighted in South Korea when he failed to pitch into the second of his MLB debut. But on Friday, he worked a scoreless first, and it was the second and third innings that presented trouble.
DJ Stewart hit a solo home run, and an error from Will Smith turned into another run when Yamamoto was unable to retire Harrison Bader with two strikes. The Mets rallied again for two more runs in the third as Yamamoto was still unable to retire hitters with two strikes on them.
Following the second and third innings, Yamamoto pitched three consecutive scoreless innings. He completed six innings total for the first time in his career, providing a positive to take away from the start.
That has been a theme for Yamamoto throughout the year. He’s either having fantastic innings, or they’ve been a struggle, with no real in between.
“When he’s going well, I think, like any pitcher, he’s getting ahead in the count,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “And he’s sequencing his pitch mix, he’s a four-pitch guy, and so when he’s going well, he’s getting ahead and he’s putting hitters away.
“I think there was that at-bat when he had count leverage on Bader, and he left a fastball out over. He had a chance to go for the strikeout right there and didn’t execute a pitch to put him away.
“And those are little things, the fine-tuning that when you get the count leverage with guys in scoring position that you’ve got to put them away. And so it kind of goes back with the fastball command.”
Yamamoto has a 4.50 ERA across 22 innings, which is about league average, but the underlying numbers paint a much better picture. Roberts believes some of the issues are just related to the growing pains for a young pitcher in a new league and country, rather than anything to be alarmed about.
“There’s certainly a learning curve,” Roberts said. “But if you look at the strikeout to walk, things that can be predictive, it’s as good as any starter in baseball if you take out that first inning in Korea.
“He’s striking out a lot of guys, he doesn’t walk many guys. But there is that learning curve of guys making adjustments with two strikes, guys in scoring position, you got to make that one extra pitch. So absolutely things like that.
“So, again, I think that each start, he’s gotten better.”
To Roberts’ point, in Yamamoto’s four starts since his debut in South Korea, many of his numbers do put him near the top of the league, in many respects.
Only three pitchers have a better strikeout to walk ratio than Yamamoto’s 28.6%, and he has also posted a 2.57 ERA and 2.97 FIP, while his pitch data ranks favorably with only Jared Jones and Corbin Burnes ranking higher in Pitching+ thanks to his strong combination of Stuff+ and Location+.
The peripherals suggest Yamamoto has the makings of an ace, now it’s just about him finding some more consistency and putting it all together.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto to continue starting once per week
So far during his Dodgers career, Yamamoto has only pitched once per week due a combination of the team’s depth and strategic planning. Roberts envisions that continuing for the foreseeable future.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Roberts answered when asked if he intends to move Yamamoto to a more traditional schedule. “But having the depth of guys in the ‘pen or dropping a starter in if we need to, off days, I think we can sustain this for quite some time.
“But we’ll continue to monitor how Yoshinobu’s stuff plays in his start, how he recovers and all that stuff.”
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