{"id":102457,"date":"2025-06-14T05:16:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-14T05:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/102457\/"},"modified":"2025-06-14T05:16:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-14T05:16:15","slug":"yoshinobu-yamamoto-struggles-as-giants-beat-dodgers-to-move-into-tie-atop-nl-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/102457\/","title":{"rendered":"Yoshinobu Yamamoto struggles as Giants beat Dodgers to move into tie atop NL West"},"content":{"rendered":"

The billing couldn\u2019t have been bigger. Dodgers vs. Giants<\/a>. Yoshinobu Yamamoto<\/a> vs. Logan Webb<\/a>. One of the game\u2019s oldest rivalries, pitting what were supposed to be two of the game\u2019s top pitchers.<\/p>\n

On Friday night at Dodger Stadium, however, only one right-handed ace showed up.<\/p>\n

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In the first meeting of the season between the Dodgers<\/a> and Giants, Webb did his thing, giving up just two runs on two hits over seven spectacular innings.<\/p>\n

Read more: ‘He\u2019s 1 of 5.’ How Ben Casparius worked his way into the Dodgers’ starting rotation<\/a><\/p>\n

Opposite him, Yamamoto was no match, floundering in a five-run, 4 \u2154-inning start that sent the Dodgers to a 6-2 defeat<\/a> \u2014 leaving the teams tied atop the National League West<\/a> with identical 41-29 records at the 70-game mark.<\/p>\n

The evening was a study in pitching excellence (or, in Yamamoto\u2019s case, a lack thereof); serving as a reminder that, for as good as Yamamoto has become in his second major league season, there are tiers to his talent he has still yet to reach.<\/p>\n

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Where Webb got soft contact and quick outs, needing just 98 pitches to complete his seventh seven-inning outing of the season, Yamamoto labored through hitters\u2019 counts and long at-bats, issuing a career-high five walks while finding the strike zone on just 56 of his 102 pitches.<\/p>\n

Where Webb limited traffic and escaped rare damage, giving up just two hits while walking only three batters, Yamamoto toiled through self-inflicted trouble; none worse than when he walked the bases loaded in the third, before giving up a tie-breaking grand slam to Casey Schmitt.<\/p>\n

\"San<\/p>\n

San Francisco’s Casey Schmitt, right, celebrates with Wilmer Flores, center, and Mike Yastrzemski after hitting a grand slam in the third inning Friday. (Gina Ferazzi \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Most of all, where Webb played the part of a contending team\u2019s staff ace, lowering his earned-run average to 2.58 (fifth-best in the National League), Yamamoto faltered in a way that\u2019s become uncomfortably familiar of late, his ERA rising to 2.64 despite an almost flawless opening month.<\/p>\n

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In his first seven starts, Yamamoto was 4-2 with a 0.90 ERA, a 0.925 WHIP and only one game in which he gave up even two earned runs.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, he\u2019s pitching like the best pitcher in the world,\u201d catcher Will Smith said on May 2, after Yamamoto pitched six shutout innings against the Atlanta Braves.<\/p>\n

Since then, Yamamoto has been on a different planet \u2014 and not a good one.<\/p>\n

Over his last seven outings, the 26-year-old Japanese star is 2-3 with a 4.46 ERA. In that span, he has more starts of less than five innings (two) than of seven full innings (one). He has given up three or more runs four times. And Friday was the second in which he was scored on five times, tying his MLB career-high.<\/p>\n

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The most consistent problem during that slump: Poor command.<\/p>\n

Yamamoto has walked 17 batters in his last 38 \u2153 innings. And when he isn\u2019t issuing free passes, he is putting himself in bad counts, like when Willy Adames opened the scoring Friday by getting ahead 2-and-0 and hitting a down-the-middle fastball to right for a solo home run.<\/p>\n

Another potential factor in Yamamoto\u2019s recent struggles: He has been forced to pitch on less rest between starts.<\/p>\n

Over his first seven starts, Yamamoto pitched on at least six days of rest \u2014 mirroring the once-per-week schedule he had in Japan.<\/p>\n

Since then, however, each of his outings have come on only five days\u2019 rest.<\/p>\n

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Yamamoto has downplayed that factor in the past. And last year, he actually had slightly better numbers on five days of rest (2.97 ERA in 11 starts) than six (3.07 ERA in starts).<\/p>\n

Still, for a Dodgers staff that has been shorthanded \u2014 leaving the club without the luxury of starting Yamamoto only once a week \u2014 it has been a marked drop-off, coming at a time when their once three-game lead in a competitive NL West has quickly evaporated amid a grueling stretch of the schedule.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers\u2019 lineup, of course, didn\u2019t help Yamamoto much, either.<\/p>\n

After scoring on an Andy Pages sacrifice fly in the second, when a throw home beat Smith but was dropped by Giants catcher Andrew Knizner while trying to apply a tag, the team\u2019s only other production against Webb came via Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez, who lined the Dodgers\u2019 first hit to right in the fourth before homering for a second-straight game on a solo blast in the seventh.<\/p>\n

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By then, however, Webb had already put the game on ice, becoming the latest starting pitcher this month to handle the Dodgers\u2019 star-studded lineup (opposing starters have a 2.43 ERA against the Dodgers in June, and are averaging almost six innings per start).<\/p>\n

It made Yamamoto\u2019s clunker all the more costly, highlighting an extended slide in production that continues to plague the team\u2019s only healthy ace.<\/p>\n

Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.<\/a><\/p>\n

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The billing couldn\u2019t have been bigger. Dodgers vs. Giants. Yoshinobu Yamamoto vs. Logan Webb. One of the game\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[12643,1384,46,5,9406,2196,39,162,112,1593,119,4,378,66,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342,1528,1558,1535,103,397,313],"class_list":{"0":"post-102457","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-giants","8":"tag-andrew-knizner","9":"tag-andy-pages","10":"tag-atlanta-braves","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-casey-schmitt","13":"tag-dodger-stadium","14":"tag-dodgers","15":"tag-giants","16":"tag-logan-webb","17":"tag-los-angeles-times","18":"tag-mike-yastrzemski","19":"tag-mlb","20":"tag-san-francisco","21":"tag-san-francisco-giants","22":"tag-sanfrancisco","23":"tag-sanfranciscogiants","24":"tag-sf","25":"tag-sf-giants","26":"tag-sfgiants","27":"tag-teoscar-hernandez","28":"tag-the-dodgers","29":"tag-will-smith","30":"tag-willy-adames","31":"tag-wilmer-flores","32":"tag-yoshinobu-yamamoto"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114680023333454247","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}