Diamondbacks slam Yamamoto, Dodgers in opener

Gabriel Moreno’s grand slam in fourth inning opens the scoring. Yamamoto allowed more runs Thursday than in his last five starts combined.

Gabriel Moreno’s grand slam was more than enough support for a scoreless Brandon Pfaadt, giving the Diamondbacks the opening salvo in a 5-3 win over Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Dodgers in Thursday night’s series opener at Chase Field in Phoenix.

Yamamoto’s first walk of the game was to Pavin Smith leading off the fourth, followed by a hard single by Josh Naylor fielded up the middle by Mookie Betts, but his flip to second base was behind Hyeseong Kim. Yamamoto got ahead 0-2 on Eugenio Suárez but hit him with an errant slider to load the bases with nobody out, the first hit by pitch of the season for Yamamoto.

Moreno made him pay by going the other way on a cutter, hitting a grand slam to the opposite field for the game’s first four runs.

It’s just the second of Yamamoto’s now 45 innings this season in which he’s allowed more than one run. Thursday marked only the third start of the year in which the right-hander gave up more than a run.

Ketel Marte got Yamamoto for a solo shot that bounced off and over the top of the right field fence in the fifth inning. The home runs by Moreno and Marte were their firsts of the season.

Yamamot’s five runs allowed in his five innings on Thursday were one more than his previous five starts and 30 innings combined.

The Dodgers’ hard-hit balls, however, did not find much safety. They had 10 of them in 6⅓ innings against Brandon Pfaadt, including six balls with an exit velocity of at least 98.7 mph and an expected batting average of .350 or higher that went for outs. Pfaadt pitched into the seventh inning for the first time this season.

Michael Conforto got a single in the sixth inning on Monday in Miami snapped an 0-for-31 skid. He’s been hitting the ball hard nearly every time up with little to show for it. He hit a ball 101 mph off the bat in the second inning, but Alek Thomas tracked it down in the deepest part of the ballpark. Conforto’s 110.9-mph liner in the fourth inning was the hardest-hit ball of the game, but Marte was there to snag it at second base.

With all those balls finding gloves, the Dodgers batted only twice with runners in scoring position against Pfaadt, and didn’t do anything in those situations.

The Dodgers finally scored in the eighth, with four hits and two runs off former Dodgers minor leaguer Juan Morillo. But another hard-hit ball by Conforto, a 95-mph grounder, was turned into a double play by Marte, the team-leading seventh double play grounded into by Conforto this season.

Conforto since his hit on Monday has hit seven balls in play, all of them hard (95 mph or higher exit velocity), and all for outs. That’s how it goes sometimes.

Shohei Ohtani homered off Kevin GInkel with two outs in the ninth inning to pull the Dodgers within two, but that was as close as they got.

Notes

• Freddie Freeman singled in the sixth inning, extending his hit streak to 13 games, tied for the seventh-longest of his career. Freeman during this streak is hitting .469/.544/.816.
• The Dodgers have scored nine total runs with Yamamoto in the game during his eight starts.
• Jack Dreyer pitched the final three innings for the Dodgers without allowing a run, which means heading into Friday six relievers (including Ben Casparius) will all have at least two days of rest.

Thursday particulars

Home runs: Shohei Ohtani (11); Gabriel Moreno (1), Ketel Marte (1)

WP — Brandon Pfaadt (6-2): 6⅓ IP, 4 hits, 3 walks, 5 strikeouts

LP — Yoshinobu Yamamoto (4-3): 5 IP, 6 hits, 5 runs, 1 walk, 4 strikeouts

Sv — Kevin Ginkel (1): 1 IP, 1 hit, 1 run

Up next

The long weekend series continues Friday night (6:40 p.m., SportsNet LA) with Roki Sasaki on the mound for the road team and left-hander Eduardo Rodríguez starting for the home team.