The Los Angeles Dodgers were only able to win one game from the Chicago White Sox during the weekend series, and it took a near-perfect outing from Yoshinobu Yamamoto to do it.
The White Sox didn’t record a baserunner until the eighth inning, and they didn’t pick up their first hit until the ninth against Yamamoto. It also came against an excellent White Sox club led offensively by Yamamoto’s former Dodgers teammate, Miguel Vargas.
After the game, Vargas shared he was not surprised by the outing from the Dodgers’ ace, via Scott Merkin of MLB.com.
“He’s Yamamoto. I guess he’s that effective most of the time,” Vargas said. “I think we put a lot of good swings out there today and we stayed as a group together and it was his day. Good for him.”
The White Sox’s first baserunner came with two outs in the eighth, and it was on a groundball that Mookie Betts booted.
Betts didn’t make any excuses for the error, and his teammates were quick to brush it off as a difficult play. Vargas also gave his backing to Betts.
“Yeah, it’s tough,” Vargas said of Betts’ gut-wrenching error. “Everyone wants to make the play, especially when your guy is doing perfect on the mound. That’s how baseball works sometimes. He’s a great baseball player and a Hall of Famer. He’ll be fine.”
At that point, the no-hitter was still intact, even if the perfect game was gone, and Yamamoto was sent out for the ninth inning. But the first batter he faced, Tristan Peters, slugged a solo home run to break up the no-hitter and shutout.
“In the dugout, it kind of feels like we won that game after that,” White Sox third baseman Miguel Vargas said. “We really needed it. We were ready for that hit.”
Yamamoto recorded one final out before his day came to an end. In total, he finished with 8.1 innings pitched, allowing one run on one hit with seven strikeouts and no walks.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto made MLB history in start
Despite Yamamoto falling shy of the no-hitter and perfect game, he still managed to make MLB history in the process.
Yamamoto became the only pitcher ever to retire the last 22 batters of one outing and then the first 22 of his next outing.
Yamamoto’s streak reached 45 consecutive batters faced without allowing a baserunner, which tied him with Mark Buehrle (2009) for the second-longest stretch in MLB history.
The MLB record for most batters retired in a row is 46, held by Yusmeiro Petit when he accomplished the feat in 2014.
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