by Cary Osborne
This is what the Dodgers signed Yoshinobu Yamamoto for.
The most accomplished pitcher in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league this decade and one of the sport’s most accomplished international players will now start the first game of the Dodgers’ 2024 postseason.
Dodger President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman said Thursday that the Dodgers switched the order of starting pitchers for the National League Division Series with Yamamoto going in Saturday’s Game 1 and Jack Flaherty moving to Sunday’s Game 2.
The Dodgers took into consideration that if there is a Game 5 in the NLDS, it will keep Flaherty on regular rest with four games between starts and he could potentially go for that game. That would put Flaherty on a track to potentially start Games 3 and 7 of a National League Championship Series if he were to go on a regular rest.
Before that, it’s Yamamoto looking to give the Dodgers postseason momentum out of the gate.
“He has experience pitching in a lot of big games. The one thing that we feel really confident about is the moment is not going to affect him,” Friedman said. “He’s going to take it in and feed on that adrenaline and do what he does.”
The evidence is his start on June 7 in New York against the Yankees at Yankee Stadium. Yamamoto, in a nationally televised game in a postseason atmosphere, shut the Yankees out over seven innings, allowing two hits and striking out seven batters. It was his best start of the season out of 18.
“To go into a hostile environment like that and see him elevate his game, we talked about it at the time, that’s not an easy thing to do, especially the first time,” Friedman said.
Yamamoto has pitched in the Olympics, the World Baseball Classic and the NPB’s Japan Series — the league’s equivalent to the World Series. On Nov. 4 last year, with his Orix Buffaloes team facing elimination in Game 6 of the Japan Series, he pitched a complete game, allowing one run and striking out 14 batters in a Buffaloes 5–1 victory.
Now he gets his first opportunity on the stage of the MLB postseason.
“Since I came here, I’ve been thinking about playing in October and winning a championship with this team,” Yamamoto said on Sept. 21.
Since Yamamoto returned on Sept. 10., after missing nearly three months with a right rotator cuff injury, he has made four starts and has allowed six earned runs in 16 innings with 21 strikeouts. He ended the regular season with his longest start since returning — five innings in Colorado. He allowed two runs but allowed only one hard-hit ball (95-mph-plus exit velocity).
NLDS: Dodgers turn to Yoshinobu Yamamoto for Game 1 was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.