TORONTO — Caulk and weather stripping are good ways to weather-proof your house in these parts. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the best way the Dodgers have found to bullpen-proof a game.
Yamamoto pitched his second consecutive complete game of the postseason, holding a Toronto Blue Jays lineup that scored 11 runs in Game 1 to just one run on four hits as the Dodgers won Game 2 of the World Series, 5-1, on Saturday night and sent the best-of-seven series to Los Angeles even at one game apiece.
Game 3 is Monday at 5 p.m. PT, with Tyler Glasnow scheduled to start for the Dodgers and Max Scherzer for the Blue Jays.
Yamamoto finished Saturday’s game having retired 20 consecutive Blue Jays batters.
Game 1 made offensive history – the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history and the biggest single inning (the Blue Jays’ nine-run sixth inning) in a World Series since 1968. The Game 2 starters – Yamamoto and Kevin Gausman – just made offense history for most of the night.
The Dodgers got on the board in the first inning with the kind of at-bats they’ve been hoping to see more often. Freddie Freeman fouled off three pitches at 2-and-2 before lashing a double into the right-field corner. Smith followed with a two-out RBI single.
They didn’t see any more of those kind of at-bats for a long time. Gausman retired the next 17 Dodgers in order.
Yamamoto had his own issues to deal with early. The first batter reached base in each of the first three innings against him.
Yamamoto had to work out of a first-and-third jam with no outs in the first inning. He struck out Vladimir Guerrero Jr., got Alejandro Kirk on a soft liner to first base and froze Daulton Varsho with a curveball for a called strike three.
In the third inning, though, he hit George Springer with a pitch to start the inning then gave up a line drive off the wall in left field by Guerrero. Guerrero was held to a single but Springer went to third on the hit and scored on a sacrifice fly by Kirk to tie the score.
That was the first of 20 Blue Jays retired in order by Yamamoto. An even more important number – he was able to do it on just 79 pitches through seven innings, keeping the Dodgers’ flame-throwing (not that way) bullpen quiet.
Smith finally ended Gausman’s run when he got a 3-and-2 fastball on the inner half and crushed it, sending it 404 feet down the left field line for a solo home run. Two batters later, Muncy got a 2-and-2 fastball on the outside corner and sent it in the same direction for an opposite-field homer (his fourth in 21 career at-bats against Gausman).
While Yamamoto continued to put up zeroes with a steady diet of splitters and curveballs, the Dodgers’ offense did what it could to make the lead bullpen-proof with two more runs in the eighth on singles by Andy Pages and Shohei Ohtani, a run-scoring wild pitch and Smith’s third RBI of the night when he hit into a forceout but beat out the double-play attempt.
More to come on this story.