{"id":627308,"date":"2026-03-17T01:00:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T01:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/627308\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T01:00:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T01:00:21","slug":"dodgers-news-yamamoto-koufax-vance-throwing-last-then-first-pitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/627308\/","title":{"rendered":"Dodgers news: Yamamoto, Koufax, Vance throwing last, then first pitch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Monday was officially named the opening day starter for the Dodgers<\/a>, with the right-hander set to take the mound on Thursday, March 26 against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Dodger Stadium.<\/p>\n

That puts Yamamoto in rare air, considering he also threw the last pitch for the Dodgers in 2025, getting the final eight outs in Game 7 of the World Series<\/a>, the day after throwing 96 pitches in six innings in Game 6<\/a>. In case you forgot how that ended, Yamamoto won Game 6 and Game 7, and the Dodgers won a second straight World Series, with the star Japanese right-hander at the center of it all.<\/p>\n

\"TORONTO,<\/a><\/p>\n

TORONTO, ON – NOVEMBER 01: Yoshinobu Yamamoto #18 of the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrates with teammates after winning Game Seven of the 2025 World Series presented by Capital One between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre on Saturday, November 1, 2025 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. (Photo by Daniel Shirey\/MLB Photos via Getty Images) MLB Photos via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Yamamoto next week will join Sandy Koufax as the only Dodgers pitchers to close out a World Series championship, then throw the first pitch of the next season. Koufax beat the New York Yankees in 1963 to win World Series MVP<\/a>, just like Yamamoto last year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1964 he started the Dodgers\u2019 first game, also at Dodger Stadium, this time a shutout to beat the St. Louis Cardinals<\/a>. It was the only opening day start of Koufax\u2019s illustrious career.<\/p>\n

While Koufax and soon Yamamoto are the only Dodgers to follow the last pitch of a championship and the first pitch of the next season, eight others in modern franchise history threw the Dodgers\u2019 final pitch of one season and the first pitch of the next.<\/p>\n

Others in the Fall Classic<\/p>\n

Brooklyn lost the best-of-nine World Series five games to two in 1916, their first trip to the Fall Classic. Wheezer Dell pitched a scoreless inning to conclude the Dodgers\u2019 pitching in that series<\/a>, then started on opening day in 1917 against the Phillies<\/a>, allowing six runs in five innings in a loss.<\/p>\n

Carl Erskine pitched the final two innings of Game 7 of the 1952 World Series<\/a> in scoreless fashion, in a game the Dodgers lost 4-2 to the rival New York Yankees. Then he started opening day in 1953 against the Pirates at Ebbets Field<\/a>. That didn\u2019t go as well for Erskine, who allowed four runs in three innings. But Brooklyn rallied for an 8-5 win.<\/p>\n

One regular season into another<\/p>\n

Right-hander Cy Barger pitched three of his seven major league seasons for Brooklyn, and closed out the 1910 season with a complete-game loss against the Boston Braves<\/a>. He followed that up with the opening day start in 1911<\/a>, and lost another one-run game to the Braves, this time on the road.<\/p>\n

Dazzy Vance is the other Hall of Famer in this group along with Koufax, and just as Koufax won NL MVP in 1963, so did Vance in 1924 after leading the league in wins (28) and strikeouts (262). Vance on the last day of the 1924 season pitched his 30th complete game of the year in beating the Braves at Ebbets Field<\/a>. Then in 1925, Vance beat the Philadelphia Phillies on opening day with another complete game<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Jesse Petty ended the 1926 season with a complete-game win over the Chicago Cubs<\/a>, and started 1927 with an opening-day win in Boston<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Leftt-hander Watson Clark beat the Phillies to end the 1928 season<\/a>, then started on opening day in 1929 in Boston. Clark lasted only three innings and allowed five runs, in a wild game Brooklyn lost 13-12<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hall of Famer Don Drysdale pitched the final two innings in relief to beat the Cubs at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, closing out the 1960 season<\/a>. Drysdale struck out two in that game to give him a major-league-leading 246 strikeouts on the season, at the time the fourth-most strikeouts in modern National League history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then Drysdale beat the Phillies in the same stadium with seven strong innings to open the 1961 campaign<\/a>. That was the fourth consecutive opening day start for the then-24-year-old Drysdale, who would start seven opening days in his career.<\/p>\n

Nobody knew it at the time, but Ram\u00f3n M\u00e1rtinez shutting out the Cincinnati Reds on August 11, 1994<\/a> was the Dodgers\u2019 final game of the season. Before this start, M\u00e1rtinez was briefly back home in Glendale for the birth of his daughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were saying to me, \u2018Have another kid,\u201d Mart\u00ednez said, laughing, to Maryanne Hudson of the Los Angeles Times.<\/p>\n

The players\u2019 strike began the next day, and labor strife escalated enough to cancel the World Series that year as well as lop one-ninth of the 1995 schedule as well. Once an accord between players and owners was finally reached and a shortened-spring training got folks ready, Mart\u00ednez pitched six strong innings to beat the Florida Marlins in Miami<\/a> in the Dodgers\u2019 first game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Monday was officially named the opening day starter for the Dodgers, with the right-hander set…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2406],"tags":[5,39,40445,1165,4332,4333,774,57,3224,4331,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-627308","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-dodgers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-dodgers","10":"tag-dodgers-history-records","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-la-dodgers","13":"tag-ladodgers","14":"tag-los-angeles","15":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","16":"tag-losangeles","17":"tag-losangelesdodgers","18":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116241815551526175","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627308","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=627308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}