Close Menu
Friday, May 9
Demo

Yoshinobu Yamamoto has worst start of season as Dodgers lose to Diamondbacks – San Bernardino Sun

adminBy Sports No Comments11 Mins Read


1 of 37

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani walks back to the dugout after striking out during the seventh inning of their game against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Thursday, May 8, 2025, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Expand

PHOENIX — Talking about the start of a four-game series against the NL West rival Arizona Diamondbacks on Thursday afternoon, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts made this observation.

“We’ve seemed to bring out the best in them.”

And the Diamondbacks brought out the worst in Yoshinobu Yamamoto.

An early (very early) Cy Young Award frontrunner, Yamamoto gave up a grand slam to Gabriel Moreno and a solo home run to Ketel Marte as the Diamondbacks beat the Dodgers, 5-3, on Thursday night at Chase Field.

“Overall, my stuff wasn’t too bad,” Yamamoto said through his interpreter. “But the grand slam, that cost (us) the game.”

Yamamoto came into the game off his best start of the season – one hit in six scoreless innings at Atlanta last week. But he was pitching on five days of rest for the first time this season after being on a one-start-per-week schedule through the first six weeks of the season.

Yamamoto’s command was off along with his calendar. He gave up three hits in the first three innings then walked Pavin Smith to start the fourth.

Josh Naylor hit a ground ball up the middle that Mookie Betts made an outstanding play to get to – but his attempt to flip the ball to Hyeseong Kim for a force at second base went badly. When Yamamoto hit Eugenio Suarez with an 0-and-2 slider, the bases were loaded with no outs.

Moreno emptied them when Yamamoto left a 2-and-0 cutter over the heart of the plate. The opposite-field grand slam was Moreno’s first home run of the season.

“I don’t think he was as sharp as he has been,” Roberts said. “Even the 3-2 breaking ball to Pavin Smith – if he strikes that, I think it’s a different inning, a different game. He has count leverage on Suárez and hits him with a slider to load the bases.

“I honestly thought Moreno took a good swing on a 2-0 cutter. It was behind in the count. To go opposite way, really good swing. … But again, I think the story is he just wasn’t completely sharp tonight.”

Marte played just his 14th game of the season Thursday night due to a hamstring injury. So he hadn’t hit a home run either – until he lined another Yamamoto cutter into the seats for a solo home run in the fifth inning.

Yamamoto’s worst start of the season lasted just five innings. The five runs he allowed doubled his ERA in an evening, from 0.90 to 1.80. The six hits he allowed are a season-high.

Diamondbacks starter Brandon Pfaadt, meanwhile, kept the Dodgers’ offense thin. But the Dodgers did win the exit velocity consolation prize.

The Dodgers hit 10 balls with exit velocities of 100 mph or higher, seven of them as Pfaadt was holding them scoreless (95 mph is the Statcast standard for a “hard-hit ball”). None of the seven hit off Pfaadt was a hit.

Michael Conforto hit two of those – a 398-foot flyout to center field and a line drive at Marte. He hit another ball 95.2 mph on the ground that Marte turned into a rally-killing double play in the eighth inning.

“I’m definitely frustrated,” said Conforto, mired in the depths of a 1-for-40 stretch. “Happy with a couple hard-hit balls today. Frustrated to be in position to keep a rally going and not being able to beat that ball out. It’s frustrating. It makes me sick.”

Pfaadt allowed just four hits while taking a shutout into the seventh inning.

The Dodgers put runners at the corners with two outs in the first inning but Will Smith grounded out to end the inning. They did the same thing in the sixth but Pfaadt struck out Andy Pages.

“You’ve got to give credit to their defense tonight,” Roberts said. “I thought they really caught the baseball well. Certainly in the outfield. I thought we squared up a lot of baseballs and didn’t get anything to show for it. Overall, I don’t think the line score speaks to how well we swung the bats.

“But you’ve got to give credit to those guys running it down out there. And also that double play ball off Conforto’s bat was a heck of a play by Marte.”

The Dodgers finally broke through in the eighth inning against Diamondbacks reliever Juan Morillo. Singles from Betts and Smith set up an RBI double by Max Muncy and an RBI single by Pages. But Marte started a nifty double play on Conforto’s ground ball to end the inning.

Ohtani tightened things up with a solo home run in the ninth before Kevin Ginkel closed it out for the Diamondbacks.



Source link

Keep Reading

Add A Comment
Leave A Reply