Yamamoto went the distance Sunday in an 8-2 win over the Yankees, needing just 102 pitches to finish nine innings, 2 runs, 4 hits, 7 strikeouts and zero walks, per the box score. It was the first of his doubleheader for the Dodgers that day, and the first time in his MLB regular-season career he's finished what he started. He already had 2 complete games on his resume from last October's World Series MVP run, but the regular-season version had been the one thing missing.
The final out of Yamamoto's first career regular-season complete game.
What made it notable wasn't just the box score line, it was the stuff behind it. Pitch-tracking follower Rob Friedman spent the afternoon posting individual pitches that looked less like a starter cruising and more like a guy painting a canvas. A backdoor two-seamer at 96 mph on the black is not something most guys throw for strikes, let alone for a called third strike late in a game.
A 96 mph two-seamer painted on the back door, right where he wanted it.
And it wasn't just the fastball. His splitter, the pitch that's become his signature out-pitch since he came over from Japan, was just as filthy, sitting in the low-90s with the kind of tumble that makes hitters look silly. Command at that velocity on a pitch that's supposed to be a changeup-speed weapon is the separator between a good starter and a true ace.
The 91 mph splitter that had hitters guessing all afternoon.
The historical context makes the outing even bigger. It's reportedly the first complete game by a Dodgers pitcher against the Yankees since Jerry Reuss did it in Game 5 of the 1981 World Series, a 45-year gap between full-nine-inning efforts against that specific opponent. Doesn't matter that it came in the regular season and not another Fall Classic, that's the kind of franchise trivia that gets people's attention.
Zoom out and this is part of a bigger arc. Yamamoto signed his 12-year, $325 million deal with LA before ever throwing a regular-season pitch stateside, and the questions in year 1 were whether the stuff and the polish from NPB would translate against MLB lineups night after night. A World Series MVP and now a dominant, efficient complete game against a Yankees lineup answers that pretty definitively, and it's the kind of outing that keeps his name squarely in the Cy Young conversation as the season rolls on.
The bigger picture, per one of Friedman's later posts breaking down a single pitch from the outing, is the conviction. Every pitch had a plan behind it, and he executed. That's the difference between a guy with electric stuff and a guy who's actually become one of the best pitchers on the planet.