by Cary Osborne
Dodger reliever Anthony Banda stood atop the mound in the Dodger bullpen. He dug into the rubber with his right foot and held a baseball in his glove.
He was there just in case.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto was facing New York Yankees center fielder Aaron Judge for the third time in the game and in the top of the sixth inning.
Heart of the lineup, third time around — that just hasn’t been Yamamoto’s gig in a long time. Since New York Yankee Stadium on June 7 long time.
But the Dodgers stuck with the Major League rookie to go after the presumptive American League MVP, and on a 2–2 count Yamamoto induced a swinging strikeout.
Banda sat, having not thrown a single warm-up pitch.
Yamamoto then went out for the seventh inning and got Giancarlo Stanton to pop out.
Then Banda came in.
Yamamoto, with previous experience in Japan’s equivalent to the World Series, was magnificent in his actual World Series debut.
He allowed one hit — a Juan Soto third-inning home run. He faced only two at-bats with a runner in scoring position — both in the first inning.
His 6 1/3 innings helped lift the Dodgers to a 4–2 victory. They now head to New York leading the World Series 2–0.
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Manager Dave Roberts said he kept going with Yamamoto because there just wasn’t that much stress. They also managed his stress after returning on Sept. 10 from a strained rotator cuff. He didn’t reach the 80 pitch-mark in any start after returning until Saturday.
It was 86 pitches on Saturday.
“Absolutely incredible tonight,” said Dodger first baseman Freddie Freeman. “His pitching was as good as any game in October. He set the tone early and luckily, we were able to get some runs.”
All of those runs came on Dodger homers. Teoscar Hernández and Freeman answered Soto’s homer with back-to-back homers to give the Dodgers a 4–1 lead. Tommy Edman started things with a solo homer in the second inning.
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It was heavy four-seamer and curveball to all hitters from Yamamoto. It was just enough of the slider to right-handed hitters and the splitter more often to left-handed hitters.
Yamamoto threw the splitter and slider 19 combined times and earned seven outs with the pitches.
“I would say that this start for me was probably a little bit better in the sense of we didn’t have to navigate Soto back at Yankee Stadium either,” said manager Dave Roberts. “Obviously on this stage, he was fantastic tonight.”
Soto was out of the Yankees’ lineup then with a forearm injury.
With him in the lineup on Saturday, the Yankees big three of Soto, Judge and Stanton went a combined 1-for-8 against Yamamoto.
“I was able to throw the strike when I wanted,” Yamamoto explained how he was able to get deep into the game on Saturday.
He came into the game having completed five innings in two of his last eight starts, including the postseason.
The Dodgers, though, used five relievers to get the final eight outs of the game.
Blake Treinen, working back-to-back games, threw 33 pitches in the ninth inning. The Dodgers turned to Alex Vesia to get the final out of the game sending the Dodgers to New York with the series lead.
The 19 outs earned by Yamamoto were the second-most by a Dodger starter in the postseason behind Jack Flaherty’s 21 in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series.
The Dodgers have won all four of Yamamoto’s starts this postseason — including the win-or-go-home Game 5 of the NL Division Series against the Padres.
World Series Game 2: Yamamoto has become the New York nemesis was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.