Two-and-a-half years and $325 million into the Yoshinobu Yamamoto experiment, the Dodgers finally got the full-length feature version. On Sunday at Yankee Stadium, in a rematch of the 2024 World Series, Yamamoto went the distance for the first time in a regular-season start, carrying LA to an 8-2 win and a series victory over New York. He was perfect through 3 innings before Trent Grisham took him deep for a solo homer, and that was basically the whole blemish sheet for the day.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Dirty 91mph Splitter. ✌️
That splitter is the pitch that made him a $325 million free agent in the first place, and it was working from the jump. But what made this start different from his usual dominant-then-out-after-6 outings was the fastball command. Yamamoto was painting both corners with a two-seamer running up to 96 mph, the kind of pitch that gets grainy zoomed-in slow-mo treatment because it's just that precise.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Painted 96mph Back Door Two Seamer. 🖌️🎨
Dave Roberts let him work all the way through, and Yamamoto needed only 102 pitches to record all 27 outs himself, allowing 4 hits with no walks. For a manager who's historically been quick to the bullpen phone in October, letting his ace finish what he started is its own small statement about how much the Dodgers trust him right now.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Complete Game. 🍾
The stat-heads were quick to point out the layered context here: this wasn't actually Yamamoto's first big-league complete game, just his first in the regular season. He'd already thrown 2 complete games in last year's postseason, meaning the moment carried more weight for the box score than for his resume.
Yamamoto's first MLB regular season compete game! (to go with his two postseason CGs last year)
Yamamoto signed his 12-year, $325 million deal with a lot of unknowns attached — a new league, new hitters, a new workload after years on a 6-man Japanese rotation schedule. He was named an All-Star this season and is already pacing toward a career-high in innings, and outings like this are exactly why the Dodgers were willing to make him one of the highest-paid pitchers in the sport. A complete game against the Yankees, with the splitter and the fastball both working at once, is the version of Yamamoto that turns a very good rotation into a genuinely scary one heading into the stretch run.