LOS ANGELES — Why does Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who enters Friday night’s elimination Game 6 of the World Series with the weight of the Dodgers’ season on his shoulders, seem to love these kinds of pressure-packed moments?
“To be honest,” Yamamoto said Wednesday night through his interpreter, “I don’t know why.”
One answer, if you’d posit the question to his coaches and teammates, is confidence.
(Photo by Rob Tringali/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
It’s the word that comes up most often when they’re asked what looks different about Yamamoto this year compared to last, when he was first making the transition from Japan to Major League Baseball.
“It’s hard to really put yourself in these guys’ shoes when they’re changing leagues, changing countries, changing cultures,” Galen Carr, the Dodgers vice president of player personnel, told me last October, hours before Yamamoto delivered 6.1 innings of one-run ball in his lone World Series start against the Yankees. “Everything about it is different — the ball, the mound, the schedule, the travel.”
That World Series appearance against the Yankees was a sign of what Yamamoto could be, but it took time for him to develop into what the Dodgers have now, the unquestioned ace of the most overpowering rotation in the playoff field.
Yamamoto is coming off back-to-back postseason complete games, the first a one-run effort that helped the Dodgers sweep the Brewers in the NLCS, the latest another one-run effort in Toronto in which he retired the last 20 batters he faced against a Blue Jays offense that leads all teams this postseason in every slash line category.
His pinpoint command and vast arsenal allow him to go where few pitchers can. In his complete game in Toronto, he used his splitter most often his first time through the lineup, his four-seamer most often his second time through and his curveball most often the third time through before returning primarily to his devastating splitter the fourth time through.
“He’s unique because he’s got what seems like six or seven pitches, and can kind of morph into different pitchers as the game goes on,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “You have to be ready to hit, and you have to be stubborn with what kind of swings you’re taking.”
As impressive as his production has been, it’s what Yamamoto nearly did after his last World Series start that might have been even more staggering.
In the Dodgers’ 18-inning win in Game 3, two days after he threw 105 pitches, he convinced his coaches he could take the ball if the game went another inning. So he trotted out to the bullpen and began getting warm. Afterward, even Blue Jays players took note of Yamamoto’s effort, which did not surprise his teammates.
“He’s my favorite player,” reliever Justin Wrobleski told me. “He’s the man. He’s just a dog. He does things that not a lot of people would do, and he wants to win.”
That’s the kind of player the Dodgers want on the mound with their season on the brink.
“Right guy at the right time,” said Kiké Hernández. “We know that Yoshi’s going to show up.”
(Photo by Aaron Gash/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
It’s incumbent upon the Dodgers’ lineup to do the same after scoring two runs in a Game 4 loss, one run in a Game 5 loss and four runs over their last 29 innings. But even if they don’t break out from their funk, Yamamoto’s presence on the mound provides an added sense of comfort that they’ll always have a chance.
He’s the first pitcher to throw back-to-back postseason complete games since Curt Schilling in 2001 and the first Dodger to do it since Orel Hershiser, who threw three straight complete games in the 1988 postseason to help his club capture a World Series title.
A similar effort again from Yamamoto in Game 6 would both save the Dodgers’ season and move them one game away from becoming the first team to repeat as champions in 25 years.
“He just became the guy, the horse, kind of like everybody knew he was going to be,” said Miguel Rojas.
Rojas said Yamamoto is “built different,” primarily in reference to the pitcher’s past. Yamamoto earned a $325 million commitment from the Dodgers due to his extraordinary work in Japan, where he won three MVPs and three Sawamura Awards, Japan’s equivalent to the Cy Young.
In 2022, he found himself in a similar situation as he does now, pitching in Game 6 of Nippon Professional Baseball’s equivalent of the World Series. Yamamoto bounced back from a Game 1 clunker in the Japan Series, rebounding with a 138-pitch, 14-strikeout complete game gem for the Orix Buffaloes, who ultimately won the championship.
He carried that resolve and ability to bounce back from mistakes stateside.
After getting annihilated by the Padres in his big-league debut last March — the Dodgers maintained belief that things would progress, but it was an ominous sign after handing him the richest contract ever for a pitcher before he’d thrown a single pitch in the big leagues — they got to him again in Game 1 of the NLDS. But in the deciding Game 5 of a series the Dodgers now look back on as a franchise turning point, Yamamoto responded with five scoreless innings in victory.
Just as it was for his team, last October was a turning point for Yamamoto, too.
The pitcher who arrived stateside last year did not look quite so certain of himself early on. He finished his rookie year last year with a 3.00 ERA, but his command wavered as he dealt with a different baseball and a new league, he struggled to routinely go deep into starts, and a shoulder injury cost him nearly three months.
But after rising to the occasion for a shorthanded rotation in last year’s postseason, Yamamoto entered the 2025 season in a new form.
“He’s standing a little bit taller,” Roberts told me back in April. “I really do see it. I know that’s figurative, but he’s standing taller.”
In May, he took one no-hitter into the sixth inning and another into the seventh. In September, he came one out away from a no-hitter, the first of three straight games in which he allowed just one hit.
Over his last nine starts dating back to Aug. 31 — regular season and postseason combined — he has a 1.15 ERA.
In his last five postseason starts, going back to that Game 2 effort in last year’s World Series, he has a 1.54 ERA.
“You just can’t lose on nights that Yamamoto throws,” Roberts said earlier this year.
If that happens Friday, the Dodgers’ season is over. With their man on the mound, they’re confident it won’t.
Yamamoto has carried the weight of his country on his shoulders at the World Baseball Classic, and he has carried the weight of his team in both the Japan Series and World Series.
It is with these moments in mind that he prepares his body, training in unorthodox ways under the guidance of Osamu Yada — “Yada Sensei,” as he is known. It is why he throws all those javelins between starts, why he does all those stretches, why he contorts his body to perfect his flexibility.
It is all to be ready for this.
“I have to just get myself ready,” Yamamoto said. “And then, only one thing we have to do is just win.”
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.
