LOS ANGELES — In hindsight, the New York Yankees pitchers who gave up 26 runs in the first two games of this weekend’s World Series rematch made one big mistake – they threw too hard.
Like Alf, the Walkman and Robin Givens, Ryan Yarbrough thrived in the 80s and never really made it to the 90s. The soft-tossing left-hander held his former team to one run on four hits over six innings as the Yankees avoided a sweep with a 7-3 victory over the Dodgers Sunday.
Yarbrough lulled the Dodgers’ hitters to sleep with his side-arm arsenal featuring a four-seam fastball that topped out at an out-of-fashion 89.5 mph and a sinker that only reached 87.5 mph. But most of his pitches were either a cutter at an average of 82.2 mph, a changeup at 77.6 mph or a sweeper even slower, 70.8 mph.
Twenty-two of Yarbrough’s 93 pitches strolled up to the plate leisurely at less than 73 mph. The slow-speed chase produced 17 swings-and-misses (seven on his sweeper) and lots of soft contact. The top four hitters in the Dodgers’ lineup (Shohei Ohtani, Teoscar Hernandez, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith) went a combined 0 for 16 in the game – 0 for 11 against Yarbrough with three of his five strikeouts.
The only damage the Dodgers made against Yarbrough came in the second inning. Andy Pages dumped a double into the right field corner, then was promptly thrown out trying to steal third base, making Tommy Edman’s fly ball into the Dodgers’ bullpen a solo home run.
In a pitching matchup that looked lopsided in the Dodgers’ favor, Yoshinobu Yamamoto was the one who couldn’t keep up.
The calm, cool precision that has typified Yamamoto’s starts this season was not in evidence Sunday. He needed 28 pitches to get through the first inning, stranding the bases loaded and holding the Yankees to just one run despite two hits and two walks.
He stranded another runner at third in the second but walked Aaron Judge to start the third – reacting out of frustration with himself after missing his spot for ball four. On an 0-and-2 count, he missed again, leaving a splitter over the plate to Ben Rice, who sent it on a 425-foot journey to dead center field for a two-run home run.
Two more hits and a wild pitch – a splitter that gave in to gravity after just 50 feet – led to another Yankees run in the third, and Yamamoto’s day was done with two outs in the fourth inning.
Yamamoto threw 96 pitches to get just 11 outs. It was a season-low for innings and strikeouts (two) and a season-high for hits allowed (seven).
The Yankees added two runs in the fifth against the Dodgers’ bullpen on two-strike RBI singles by D.J. LeMahieu and Oswald Peraza. LeMahieu drove in another run with fourth hit of the game, an RBI double in the ninth.
When things finally sped up for the Dodgers in the seventh inning, Pages hit a 97-mph fastball from Yankees reliever Jonathan Loaisiga for a solo home run and Max Muncy did the same thing to an 89.3 mph changeup two batters later.
After going 105 plate appearances into the season without a home run, Muncy has seven in his past 109, including three in the past two games.
