One pitcher, one game: Yamamoto turns back time, and Jays

His second consecutive complete game brings the Dodgers back home with a 1-1 Series split.

Yamamoto in Game 2.

A pitcher’s average start in Major League Baseball this season was 5.2 innings. That means he was asked to get about 16 outs. That doesn’t count all the times that teams used an “opener,” who only pitched the first inning by design. But it’s a little unnerving, even though it’s not surprising. When Hall of Fame baseball writer John Lowe devised the “quality start,” he set it for six innings, or 18 outs. That, he reasoned, was the bare minimum, when paired with three or fewer earned runs. Someone who averages six innings today will be taken to the lab for frenzied physical analysis, or maybe an emergency room.

The theory is that a pitcher can’t be expected to survive the Third Time Through. In other words, he shouldn’t have to worry about facing the same hitter three times in a night. They make it sound like a pitcher would be going through Death Valley or the Darien Gap when doing so. They also make it sound like pitchers aren’t capable of adjusting to circumstances, and only hitters are.

Paul Skenes averaged 5.9 innings per start and is likely to win the Cy Young Award. Yoshinobu Yamamoto averaged 5.8. Sixty percent of his starts were “quality,” as opposed to the 70 posted by MLB leader Bryan Woo of Seattle. But as the Dodgers’ bullpen kept falling apart like an abandoned Olympic natatorium, and as the club began girding for the only month that counts, it became clear that Yamamoto was ready for the Third Time Through, and in fact the hitters were the ones who found it a disadvantage. Since Yamamoto has exquisite command of six different pitches, time is on his side when he searches for weaknesses, or just throws his basic splitter-curve-sinker combination because it varies so much in velocity. In his past two postseason games, Yamamoto has seemed ready for the Tenth Time Through. He only left each one because the innings had run out and the Dodgers were ahead.

The 14 Blue Jays whom Yamamoto faced for the third time on Saturday night went 0-for-14. The 14 Milwaukee Brewers whom Yamamoto faced for the third time on Oct. 14 went 0-for-14. In the two games, Yamamoto pitched 18 innings, gave up seven hits and two earned runs, walked one and struck out 15. In each game the first batter he faced hurt him, George Springer with a double in this Game 2 of the World Series, Jackson Chourio with a home run in that Game 2 of the NLCS. But that’s what they used to say about the top pitchers. Get them early. They get better the more often they see what they’re dealing with.

The Dodgers won, 5-1, to get a split in Toronto, and now the Blue Jays have to win one out of three in Dodger Stadium to make everyone go through customs again. But the most important zero that Yamamoto posted was this: No relief pitchers required. Roki Sasaki was warming at the end, maybe out of boredom. Although Mookie Betts made one pretty shortstop play, the outs were basically humdrum until Yamamoto struck out the side in the eighth. Attention: That Fourth Time Through really isn’t a problem either.

The critical plate appearance came in the Toronto first. Matt Lukes had followed Springer’s double with a single. With one out, Alejandro Kirk scorched a liner into Freddie Freeman’s glove. The next hitter was Daulton Varsho, who had tied up Friday night’s game with a homer, en route to an 11-4 win. Yamamoto fell behind 3-and-0, got two strikes and then froze Varsho with a 77 mph curve. The Dodgers had scored in the top of the first, but if the Blue Jays had countered with a couple in the bottom half, they might have felt bulletproof. They did tie it on a sacrifice fly by Kirk in the third, but that just meant Kirk would be the first of the 20 consecutive Toronto retirees to end the game.

Kevin Gausman was matching Yamamoto through six innings, but Will Smith and Matt Muncy struck for solo homers, and Yamamoto picked up the Dodgers’ cloak of inevitability and brushed off the dust from Friday night.

Yamamoto got 20 first-pitch strikes on the 32 batters he faced, and he made the Blue Jays swing and miss 17 times, which is high for them. They had only 16 foul balls. The back-to-back complete games in the postseasons were a first since Arizona’s Curt Schilling did it in 2001, and it was only the fifth complete game in the World Series in 22 seasons.

There always has been more attention, and consternation, on Yamamoto’s 12-year, $325 million contract than on the accomplishments that qualified him for it. For one thing, this is the second year of the deal and he only turned 27 in August. For another, he was a far more decorated pitcher in Japan than any major leaguer in America is today. He allowed less than one baserunner per inning for six consecutive healthy years as a starter for the Orix Buffaloes, and in a four-year span he won 67 and lost 22. Between 2021 and 2023 he was the MVP in Japan three times, the equivalent of their Cy Young Award winner three times, and won the pitching triple crown (wins, strikeouts, ERA) three times. And he had 14 complete games, six of them in 2021. Considering his age and the team that employs him, and including his Japanese portfolio, Yamamoto has every chance to be a Hall of Fame pitcher.

The paper matchups will tilt toward Los Angeles now. Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani are the scheduled pitchers for Games 3 and 4, probably against Toronto’s Shane Bieber and Max Scherzer, who is 41 and had a 5.15 ERA and figures to pitch Game 3. This brings the Toronto bullpen in play, which is not exactly populated with Nasty Boys either. From afar it would seem lefthander Eric Lauer would be a possibility, since he has a 7-2 record with a 2.90 ERA against the Dodgers, and in fact was 9-2 for Toronto this season, with a career-best 1.108 WHIP.

In the Dodgers’ preferred dreams, they would win Games 3-4 and then have a healthy lead in the ninth inning of Game 5, so they could bring in Clayton Kershaw to pitch the final inning of his career, with trumpets blaring and a trophy awaiting. However, the Blue Jays are too good to accept that scenario. For their part, they’re just happy they’ll only see Yamamoto in Game 6, the Second Time Through.