Yamamoto came out throwing his best stuff of the year Tuesday night. Rob Friedman's pitch-tracking account was posting filthy overlays of the guy's splitter and elevated fastball before the game was even out of the third inning, and for good reason — Yamamoto had a no-hitter working and had struck out 4 through 3 innings.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 97mph ⛽️ 4th K thru 3
The Dodgers had jumped out fast behind Freddie Freeman, who snapped a home run drought dating back to July 4 with a 3-run shot in the first inning that made it 3-0 before Cardinals starter Brycen Mautz had even worked through his first trio of batters.
Freddie Freeman hits his first home run since July 4!
For five innings it looked like a laugher in the making — Yamamoto no-hit, LA up big, the kind of game where Cardinals beat writer Derrick Goold was already joking the Dodgers had a shot at winning by 27. Then it all came apart in a hurry. Jose Fermin broke up the no-hitter with a single, and Thomas Saggese — who'd already gone deep twice in the series — followed with his third homer in two games to make it a one-run game. St. Louis wasn't done. Leo Bernal, up in the majors for the first time just a day earlier, took Yamamoto deep in the seventh for his first career homer, and suddenly a start that was tracking toward history was a 5-4 nail-biter.
After five no-hit innings, Yoshinobu Yamamoto has now given up a pair of two-run homers. Thomas Saggese in the sixth (third in last two games) and Leo Bernal (first career HR) just now in the seventh. Dodgers clinging to a 5-4 lead, though all of their high lev arms are fresh.
Alec Burleson tied it in the eighth with a sac fly, his 101st RBI of the season, and from there the Dodgers just couldn't buy a hit when it mattered. Goold pegged them at an absurd 1-for-16 with runners in scoring position heading into extras — a number that ballooned to 1-for-18 with 13 men left on base by the final out. Shohei Ohtani struck out four times. The Cardinals broke it open late and walked away with an 8-6 win in 10 innings.
The loss is the kind that stings beyond the box score. According to reporting on the club's season, the Dodgers have gone roughly.500 since July 1 — a stretch that includes averaging under 4.2 runs a game, one of the worse marks in baseball over that span — and Wednesday's collapse fits that pattern to a tee: a dominant start, an early lead, and an offense that vanished the moment it needed a knockout hit. Yamamoto walks away with a final line of 4 runs on 5 hits over 7 innings, a start that will be remembered less for the strikeouts and more for what got away.
For the Cardinals, it's the opposite story — a rookie in Bernal delivering in his second big-league game, Saggese heating up at the perfect time, and a club that's found a way to grind out extra-inning wins against a star-studded lineup. Goold's own recap called it a heist, and it's hard to argue otherwise. For the Dodgers, the concern isn't one bad night — it's that this is exactly the kind of night they keep having.