TORONTO – Yoshinobu Yamamoto held the Toronto Blue Jays to a run over six-plus innings to earn the win as the Los Angeles Dodgers prevailed 4-1 for their fifth straight victory Tuesday, aided by the opening run driven in by compatriot Shohei Ohtani.<\/p>\n
Yamamoto (2-1) got off to a perfect start at Rogers Centre by striking out the side in the first inning and had three more 1-2-3 frames through the fifth in a solid 97-pitch effort, striking out six while allowing five hits and a walk overall.<\/p>\n
“I was managing to pitch the way I wanted to with both my fastballs and breaking balls,” said Yamamoto, who shone on his return to the ballpark where he won the World Series MVP in November.<\/p>\n
“The opposing team was batting aggressively but things were clicking for me, and I was also able to keep my pitch count low.”<\/p>\n
Ohtani plated the game’s first run, lining a drive to the right-field wall for an RBI single in the two-run third off Kevin Gausman (0-1), and Alex Freeland also singled in a run off the right-hander in the fifth for a 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Yamamoto gave up his only run in the sixth on a George Springer double and was tested further in the seventh when the Blue Jays’ Japanese rookie Kazuma Okamoto, who successfully made an Automated Ball-Strike Challenge earlier after a pitch was called a strike, doubled to center.<\/p>\n
Yamamoto got the hook from skipper Dave Roberts after letting the next batter reach on a bunt. Reliever Alex Vesia had a bases-loaded jam with no outs but retired the next three batters to preserve the two-run lead for Yamamoto and the Dodgers.<\/p>\n
“I was happy to face him in the majors. It was good as I was able to attack the zone somehow,” Yamamoto said after his first big-league encounter with Okamoto, who flew out twice against the right-hander before the double.<\/p>\n
Ohtani has reached in 42 consecutive MLB games to move within one of the Japanese record set by Ichiro Suzuki in 2009 while at the Seattle Mariners, while Okamoto went 1-for-4.<\/p>\n
“I stood in the batter’s box really looking forward to it,” Okamoto said of the matchup with his Japan teammate Yamamoto. “I believe I was able to hit when I needed to.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TORONTO – Yoshinobu Yamamoto held the Toronto Blue Jays to a run over six-plus innings to earn the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2406],"tags":[5,39,1165,4332,4333,774,57,3224,4331,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-669819","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-la","11":"tag-la-dodgers","12":"tag-ladodgers","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","15":"tag-losangeles","16":"tag-losangelesdodgers","17":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116367867957127030","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669819","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=669819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}