With the strange story involving Shohei Ohtani and his now-former interpreter hanging over the team like a gigantic umbrella, the Los Angeles Dodgers were hoping Yoshinobu Yamamoto would be able to calm things down a bit during his MLB debut early Thursday morning. The second contest of the two-game series in Seoul featured Yamamoto making the start versus the San Diego Padres.
While the hopes were high and the anticipation great, the outing was a total disaster. Yamamoto pitched only one inning — allowing five earned runs and four hits before being pulled. The 43-pitch outing included a HBP, one walk, and two extra-base hits.
There were some concerns from Spring Training that Yamamoto may have been tipping his pitches. He accrued an 8.38 ERA during this period. The Dodgers didn’t seem overly worried, though this opening start certainly wasn’t ideal. San Diego had struggled offensively throughout the spring, which extended to the games in Korea before this outing. Yamamoto’s command was uncharacteristically off even though he has a reputation as a guy with pinpoint control.
Once Xander Bogaerts and Fernando Tatis Jr. got on base from the jump, a Jake Cronenworth triple opened the proverbial floodgates on the inning. Yamamoto did get two strikeouts, but he wasn’t able to recover from the rough initial start to the inning. Now, this is one start, It would be foolish to have serious worry over Yamamoto’s future as a pitcher for the franchise. The team is playing an atypical schedule where travel could be a major factor.
We’ll get more of an idea as to how potent Yamamoto can be when the Dodgers return to Los Angeles and function with more of a conventional schedule moving forward. However, when you pay someone $325 million over 12 years, you’re expecting to see ace-level stuff. Yamamoto sits atop the Dodgers’ rotation alongside fellow recent acquisition Tyler Glasnow.
As the season continues, Los Angeles figures to also get Walker Buehler and Clayton Kershaw back in the fold to go along with the likes of Glasnow, Yamamoto, James Paxton, Bobby Miller, and Gavin Stone (among others).
