LOS ANGELES — The end of Tuesday night’s Dodgers-Cubs game was truly ugly: A three-error eighth inning, leading to five Chicago runs, a blown 3-1 lead, a 6-3 loss and a game lost in the standings to each of the Dodgers’ closest pursuers.
But earlier in the evening there was truly reason for hope. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, making his first big league appearance in almost three months, came out firing and looked like the pitcher whose Nippon Professional Baseball credentials earned him a $325 million contract from the Dodgers last winter.
And Yoshinobu’s four-inning, 59-pitch, eight-strikeout performance, coming off an extended absence with a rotator cuff strain, wasn’t the only development Tuesday that had Manager Dave Roberts positively sanguine about the potential of what has been an injury-scrambled rotation.
Tyler Glasnow, acquired to be the postseason ace but sidelined since Aug. 17 with tendonitis in his right elbow, had a bullpen session earlier in the day that prompted some optimism that he, too, might be returning at just the right time to turn the Dodgers’ postseason rotation from a question mark into an exclamation point, and maybe even an intimidating factor.
It is early in the process, true. But indulge Dodgers personnel if maybe they feel their luck on the injury front is beginning to turn just a bit, during a season in which a couple of starting rotations’ worth of pitchers have landed on the injured list.
“I feel much better about the rotation tonight than I did 24 hours ago,” Roberts said, noting that following Glasnow’s bullpen session Tuesday he will pitch in a simulated game on Friday in Atlanta, before the road trip opener against the Braves. “… It’s starting to turn as far as kind of getting back to the rotation that we had envisioned.”
Just 24 hours earlier, a rocky outing by Walker Buehler halted his forward momentum and again cast doubt on just who would be in that postseason rotation beyond Jack Flaherty. Bobby Miller has taken multiple steps back. Gavin Stone is also on the IL with elbow tendonitis. Clayton Kershaw’s toe issue has created uncertainty.
So leading up to first pitch Tuesday night, Landon Knack might have been considered the Dodgers’ No. 2 starter. And there’s still plenty of time for the situation to become scrambled even further.
But Yamamoto took the ball and did something with it, and maybe there was more involved than just anxiousness to get back into action. This was an all-Japanese pitching matchup, Yamamoto vs. the Cubs’ Shota Imanaga, who came in with a 12-3 record and a 2.99 ERA.
And in addition to the starting pitchers, Japan was represented by Shohei Ohtani (0 for 4) and Chicago DH Seiya Suzuki, who had two singles, a double, a run scored and an RBI – all after Yamamoto left the game. Against his countryman, Suzuki struck out twice.
He wasn’t alone. Yamamoto struck out the side in the first and third innings, and he had everything working. He reached 97.9 mph with his four-seam fastball, averaging 96.3, and got six whiffs out of 10 swings with his splitter and a combined 24 whiffs and called strikes with his four-seamer, curveball and splitter. Those were the dominant pitches in his arsenal; he threw one slider (fouled off by Isaac Paredes in the second) and one sinker (a Paredes single in the fourth).
“Today was like pretty close to the best of the year,” Yamamoto said through an interpreter, and consider that he had a seven-inning, two-hit, nine-strikeout performance against the Yankees in the Bronx in June.
“It’s been a while since the last outing, so that was a little different, (but) I was trying to stay calm and to get out there and then perform. … Today’s outing turned out so much better than I expected.”
His manager wasn’t sure what to expect from Yamamoto in his first start since June 15.
“I knew that he was going to go out there and compete,” Roberts said. “I think that (facing Imanaga) heightened the focus for him. I really do. And he really showed out. I didn’t know if there was going to be rust or how he’s going to command the baseball, but he passed with flying colors.
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“… I mean, we’ll take this every start going forward. The fastball command, both sides of the plate, hits the low dart, the split down below that, stealing the strike with the breaking ball. Yeah, it was just really efficient. It was really good.”
The trick now is for those pitchers coming off the injured list to ramp up as quickly as they possibly can given a limited window. Tuesday’s game was No. 145, and there are a little more than 2½ weeks left in the regular season.
For Yoshinobu, his next start will come Monday in Atlanta, and Roberts expects the target would be five innings and 75 pitches.
“He’s very aware of where we’re at and the value that he brings to our ballclub,” Roberts said. “So I really like the focus from him. There’s a sense of urgency. And he realizes that he’s got three more starts now to be as finely tuned as he can possibly be and built up.”
After all, October is coming.
jalexander@scng.com