The Los Angeles Dodgers made a surprising last-minute swap of their Game 1 and Game 2 starting pitchers on Thursday. President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said rookie Yoshinobu Yamamoto, not veteran Jack Flaherty, would get the ball in the National League Division Series opener against the San Diego Padres on Saturday.
When the Padres jumped on Yamamoto for a walk and three hits — including a three-run Manny Machado homer — it was easy to jump to the lazy conclusion: the moment got the better of the 26-year-old right-hander.
Not so, said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.
“There were some things with his glove, giving away his pitches,” Roberts said of Yamamoto. “We’ll clean that up internally. They had a lot of good swings against him in three innings.”
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If Yamamoto was indeed using his glove position to telegraph which pitches the Padres hitters were about to see, he apparently corrected the mistake in the second inning. The Padres didn’t score.
Then in the third inning, the Padres sandwiched doubles by Fernando Tatis Jr. and Xander Bogaerts around a walk to Jackson Merrill, scoring twice to take a 5-3 lead. By the fourth inning, Yamamoto was out of the game.
Yamamoto’s pitch-tipping issue didn’t even require a front-row seat to diagnose. Some savvy internet sleuths watching at home noticed the issue, too.
That’s funny, my son who is a pitcher in college, said the same thing. He said he noticed when runners were on he held his glove differently before he threw the splitter.
— Rick Rios (@Jari44) October 6, 2024
For his part, Yamamoto said he tried to use the extra intensity of his first playoff game to his advantage. He did not specifically say after the game that he was tipping pitches.
“I did feel passion from the crowd,” he said via an interpreter. “I wanted to utilize that, to turn that into a positive for me. But unfortunately I was not able to do that.”
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Yamamoto signed a 12-year, $325 million contract with the Dodgers last December after leaving Japan. He missed significant time with a shoulder injury that limited him to 18 regular season starts.
When he was on the mound, Yamamoto was mostly effective. He finished his rookie season 7-2 with a 3.00 ERA and 105 strikeouts in 90 innings.
Because the Dodgers were careful to give him at least five days’ rest between starts, he was not going to be able to pitch twice in the best-of-five NLDS unless he appeared in Game 1 and Game 5.
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Despite his struggles in Game 1, Yamamoto is likely to start Game 5 if needed, Roberts said.
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