ATLANTA — Six months of living in Los Angeles and traffic doesn’t bother Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Making his second start since returning from a strained rotator cuff, Yamamoto picked his way through four danger-filled-but-scoreless innings and the Dodgers broke the game open late in a 9-0 victory over the Atlanta Braves on Monday night.
The win allowed the Dodgers to salvage a split of the series against the Braves despite being outscored 16-3 and not holding a lead at any point in the first two games. They scored 18 runs in the next two games.
“That was big,” Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “When you start off a four-game set in a series like this towards the end of the year and you want to play well — to lose the first two and especially the second one in that fashion (10-1), to come back and respond these last two games, I thought that was big by our team.”
The Braves put the leadoff man on base in each of Yamamoto’s four innings and got that runner to third base each time. But they went 0 for 10 with runners in scoring position against Yamamoto, coming up empty against the right-hander.
“I focused on one hitter at a time and stayed calm.” Yamamoto said through his interpreter.
“As a result it was good. And overall, my stuff wasn’t that perfect tonight. But I got great defense behind me supporting my back, so it helped me a lot too.”
Yamamoto was helped by that defense most urgently in the third inning.
MIchael Harris II led off with a bloop single to right field. Jorge Soler lined a double high off the wall in center field but a perfect relay from Tommy Edman to Kiké Hernandez to Will Smith beat Harris home and prevented him from scoring.
“That was a great throw. That was a perfect throw,” Yamamoto said. “It couldn’t have been better than that.”
In the fourth inning, Ramon Laureano led off with a triple off the wall in right field. But Yamamoto struck out Sean Murphy, throwing his first slider of the night for the third strike. With the infield in, he got Orlando Arcia to ground out harmlessly to Miguel Rojas at shortstop and Gio Urshela hit a soft liner to Rojas to end that threat.
Even though he has gone just four innings in each of his two starts since returning from his shoulder injury, Yamamoto has given the Dodgers some uplifting news in the midst of their starting pitching troubles, Freeman said.
“Yamamoto getting out of those jams, runners on third with less than two outs multiple times, just big pitches and you can tell he embraced those moments and got us out of that,” he said.
“We were all kind of down when Glas (Tyler Glasnow) got that news and we heard that news, it’s a big part of our season. He’s had a great year for us, great first year in a Dodger uniform, you just wish he could’ve made it all the way through. But in baseball, you never know what’s going to happen any given day or pitch. I feel bad for him. I know he worked extremely hard to come back and new injuries happen. But to go out and see Yama come back — I’m sure he doesn’t feel like he had his best command but to muscle through four innings and get out of massive jams probably boosted his confidence and ours. It’s a good end to the series and a big confidence boost for everyone in here.”
All of that hard work pushed Yamamoto’s pitch count up to 72 and he was done after four innings.
They were not as clean as his four innings against the Chicago Cubs in his return start last week. He walked two and threw just 42 strikes this time. After touching 98 mph with his fastball last week, Yamamoto settled back down to his season average (95.5 mph) Monday. His splitter was more effective against the Cubs though he did get four of his 10 swings-and-misses on it against the Braves.
“I thought that it wasn’t as sharp command-wise as his first one back, but he made pitches when he needed to,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I just love the way he navigated. There were some big stressful innings. He made pitches when he needed to.”
Meanwhile, the Dodgers’ explosive offense came with a slow-burning fuse.
They were held without a hit through four innings by Max Fried but still managed to get a lead. Rojas drew a leadoff walk in the third inning, moved to second on a ground out, opportunistically stole third behind the left-handed Fried’s back then scored on a wild pitch.
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Edman broke up Fried’s no-hitter with a leadoff double in the fifth inning and scored on a soft single sliced to right field by Rojas who again worked his way around to score without needing another hit.
Three consecutive walks loaded the bases with one out in the seventh inning, starting the Dodgers on their way to a six-run inning.
The first two runs scored without a hit (a ground ball by Shohei Ohtani and a sacrifice fly by Mookie Betts). Teoscar Hernandez drove in another with an RBI single and the Dodgers’ fourth hit of the game – a three-run home run by Freddie Freeman – took care of the rest.
“I’ve played a long time and that was probably one of the weirdest offensive games I’ve been a part of,” Freeman said of the Dodgers’ nine runs on just four hits. “Every walk it seemed like we cashed them in. Great at-bats by our guys all nine innings today.”
Ohtani went 0 for 4 with a walk and a pair of run-scoring grounders that increased his RBI total to 108. He did not hit a home run or steal a base during the series, remaining at 47 home runs and 48 steals as he tries to become MLB’s first 50-50 player.
Four Dodgers relievers – Evan Phillips, Blake Treinen, Daniel Hudson and Brent Honeywell Jr. – held the Braves without a hit over the final five innings.
“The guys in the ‘pen really looked like themselves,” Roberts said. “I thought that they imposed their will the way they should.”