{"id":257517,"date":"2025-11-02T12:09:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T12:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/257517\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T12:09:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T12:09:09","slug":"yoshinobu-yamamoto-etches-himself-into-world-series-lore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/257517\/","title":{"rendered":"Yoshinobu Yamamoto etches himself into World Series lore"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Yoshinobu Yamamoto signed a contract ahead <\/a>of the 2024 season worth $325 million over 12 years.\n <\/p>\n

\n He had never thrown a pitch in Major League Baseball. But the Los Angeles Dodgers had enough money to take that kind of risk, making the bet that such an insane amount of money will eventually be worth it.\n <\/p>\n

\n From October 31<\/a> to the early hours of November 2, Yamamoto didn\u2019t just prove to be worth that incredible contract. He proved to be priceless.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n

\n The Los Angeles Dodgers began play on Friday<\/a> with their backs against the wall, facing a roaring Rogers Centre crowd as the Toronto Blue Jays were one win away from their first title in 32 years. They had just lost two straight games at home in Chavez Ravine and it seemed like time was about to run out on their dynasty claim\n <\/p>\n

\"Yoshinobu<\/p>\n

\n Enter Yamamoto.\n <\/p>\n

\n He shutdown the Blue Jays again on Friday, going six innings and allowing five hits and just one run while striking out six. It was his second victory of the series.\n <\/p>\n

\n But that achievement paled in comparison to what he did in Game 7.\n <\/p>\n

\n Pitching on roughly 24 hours of rest, Yamamoto entered the game in the most intense of situations. The Blue Jays had two men on base, needing just one run to win the championship. On his second pitch, he hit Alejandro Kirk and loaded the bases. There was no room for error.\n <\/p>\n

\n He forced a ground ball to Miguel Rojas, the man who tied the game with a home run in the top of the ninth, who fired home and got Isiah Kiner-Falefa by an inch. Facing Ernie Clement, who tied the postseason record for most hits in a single playoffs, he forced a popout and ended the threat.\n <\/p>\n

\n In the 10th, he put the Blue Jays down in order. In the 11th, he allowed a double to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and a walk to Addison Barger, putting runners on first and third with one out. With one last nasty splitter, he shattered Alejandro Kirk\u2019s bat and forced a game ending double play.\n <\/p>\n

\n It was his third win of the World Series. It was baseball heroics. It might change the course of his career \u2013 starting pitchers are not meant to pitch on such little rest in such high-leverage situations. But it was the stuff legends are made of and no Dodgers fan will ever forget it.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cHe was the MVP of this series. That was incredible,\u201d catcher Will Smith said. \u201cI talked to him yesterday and was like \u2018Hey, if you can give one, we can win.\u2019 He gave us three. That was special. He will have a few months off, I know he\u2019s going to need it. I\u2019m just happy for him.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n His manager, Dave Roberts, put it more succinctly.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYamamoto\u2019s the GOAT!\u201d he yelled repeatedly on the Fox broadcast, using the abbreviation for Greatest of All Time.\n <\/p>\n

\"Yoshinobu<\/p>\n

\n That might be a stretch to say at this point in the Japanese star\u2019s career, but it\u2019s undisputed that his World Series will go down as one of the greatest in baseball history. Winning three games in a single World Series hasn\u2019t been done since Randy Johnson did it in 2001. And he almost got in a fourth game \u2013 he was warming up in the 18th inning of Game 3 when Freddie Freeman went deep to give the Dodgers the win, just two days after he pitched a complete game.\n <\/p>\n

\n He\u2019s now in the same conversation as pitchers such as Bob Gibson, Christy Mathewson and Mickey Lolich. It\u2019s telling that only six pitchers have accomplished the feat since World War II.\n <\/p>\n

\n The kind of toughness and grit that it takes to do what Yamamoto did on Saturday \u2013 and early Sunday \u2013 can\u2019t be overstated.\n <\/p>\n

\n Starting pitchers are creatures of habit. They start their game and then spend the next four days recovering, resting and following a dedicated routine that gets them ready to pitch on the fifth day. They repeat that cycle through the season, over and over from March until October.\n <\/p>\n

\n And when they pitch, it\u2019s a more strategic task than what relievers often go through. Starting pitchers have to face the same batters two or three times, forming a game plan to keep hitters guessing and then executing it. Reliever often come into a game aiming to overpower hitters with their stuff, either velocity or wicked movement, and use full effort on most pitches.\n <\/p>\n

\n Starters don\u2019t always make good relievers, but somehow when the games get to be the most important, managers always put their top guys on the mound whether they want to be there or not.\n <\/p>\n

\n Yamamoto most certainly wanted the ball.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI was not sure if I could pitch tonight until I went to the bullpen, but I\u2019m glad I was able to,\u201d Yamamoto said through an interpreter when asked about his superhuman effort pitching on back-to-back nights.\n <\/p>\n

\"Yoshinobu<\/p>\n

\n He went two-and-two-thirds innings, allowing one hit and striking out one batter. He lowered his ERA for the postseason to a paltry 1.45 and held opposing hitters to a .143 batting average in five starts and one relief appearance.\n <\/p>\n

\n For all the ink spilled about his teammate Shohei Ohtani\u2019s two-way prowess and the two incredible games that he had in the NLCS and Game 3 of the World Series, Yamamoto\u2019s performance is arguably more connected<\/a> to baseball\u2019s glorious past.\n <\/p>\n

\n A complete game victory<\/a> in Game 2, followed by volunteering for relief duty two days later. Then another six-inning performance, followed by two-plus innings of clutch relief pitching less than a day later.\n <\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s the kind of stuff October legends are made of.\n <\/p>\n

\n Yamamoto, as is his wont, approached that rarefied air with humility.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI did everything I was supposed to do, and I\u2019m so happy that I was able to win this with these teammates,\u201d Yamamoto said through his interpreter.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yoshinobu Yamamoto signed a contract ahead of the 2024 season worth $325 million over 12 years. He had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-257517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}