by Cary Osborne
With a no-hitter lost in the seventh inning, Yoshinobu Yamamoto stood on the mound with traffic to his back and front.
Runners on the corners, two outs, the Dodgers clinging to a one-run lead.
Before Yamamoto took the mound on Tuesday, manager Dave Roberts called him an ace — a label not used loosely. And with the Dodgers in the position they were in — four straight losses and a winded pitching staff — they needed him to pitch like it.
He did. And then he emphasized it with a 2–2 pitch to Arizona designated hitter Pavin Smith in the seventh.
Yamamoto’s 110th pitch of the night pounded the glove of catcher Will Smith, as Pavin cut and missed.
After the 21st out of Yamamoto’s night, he walked through the Dodger dugout where he received 28 high-fives from an appreciative group.
The ace left with the lead intact.
It wouldn’t hold in a wild end. But the Dodgers came back to walk it off with three runs in the bottom of the 10th inning to win 4–3.
“I thought he was going to go distance tonight,” said Max Muncy, whose walk-off sacrifice fly in the 10th won it for the Dodgers. “I thought he had the stuff to get the no-hitter. He was really good commanding all of his stuff. It really sucks we only gave him one run. Obviously not a great job by us. But to get away with the win there is obviously the biggest part.”
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Yamamoto pitched arguably his best game as a Major Leaguer. He retired 18 of the first 19 Diamondbacks he faced.
Yamamoto was so tricky that he threw a cutter inside to Carroll in the sixth inning that the Diamondback swung at and was hit by.
The Dodger right-hander struck Carroll out two pitches later. He struck out the side in the sixth inning.
Ketel Marte, who finished third in the National League MVP voting last year, got Yamamoto to lead off the seventh with a hard-hit single to the wall in right-center field. It was the only hit Yamamoto allowed.
Marte found his way to third base, and with catcher Gabriel Moreno reaching on a walk, Yamamoto began walking on the edge.
He refused to back down, even as his pitch count rose and his breath got heavier.
Yamamoto’s cutter to Smith was the fourth different pitch he earned a strikeout with. He earned outs with five different pitches.
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“I use that word very carefully and cautiously because there’s a lot of that comes with that,” Roberts said of the “ace” label. “Certainly the track record, there’s just the ability to go deep in games when you need it, (the ability to) handle left and right, to be a top-end guy — there’s very few of in the big leagues. And so I just see a confident player. And even that Pavin Smith at-bat, where he got over 100 pitches right there, he wanted that last hitter.”
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Yamamoto is the only Dodger pitcher to go at least seven innings in a game this season. He’s done it twice.
He took a no-hitter into the sixth inning against Atlanta on May 2.
He didn’t factor into the decision on Tuesday. But he put the Dodgers in a position to win.
“You just can’t lose on nights that Yamamoto throws. Those ones really sting,” Roberts said. “So to get a win tonight, I’m going to sleep a lot better tonight.”
Dodgers win a wild one late, but it starts with Yamamoto pitching like an ace was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.