Milwaukee — The Dodgers walked out of American Family Field on Sunday night with a 2-1 Game 1 defeat, but not without a familiar answer waiting at the front of their postseason rotation. Yoshinobu Yamamoto will start Game 2 of the National League Championship Series on Monday, asked once again to settle a club that has built its October hopes around a deep staff and a pitcher who has repeatedly looked most comfortable under the brightest lights.
Los Angeles will face Brewers rookie right-hander Logan Henderson in a 5 p.m. ET game, with Yamamoto taking the mound after Tarik Skubal absorbed the narrow loss in the opener. Skubal, the two-time American League Cy Young Award winner acquired during the season, kept the game close, but the Dodgers could not find the timely hit needed to turn their opportunities into runs.
Freddie Freeman did not make the loss sound like a crisis. “Nobody enjoys losing in the postseason, but this is a long series,” the first baseman said. “It was only the first game. We come back tomorrow with Yamamoto, and there is plenty of confidence.”
That confidence has history behind it. When the Dodgers lost the opening game of a postseason series a year ago, Yamamoto answered by leveling the World Series with a complete-game performance. That Fall Classic reached its final game, with Yamamoto earning series MVP honors as Los Angeles captured a second straight championship. A possible third consecutive title will require another October push from him.
Yamamoto has been the October stopper
The Dodgers are 9-1 in Yamamoto’s 10 postseason starts, including six victories in six road assignments. Among pitchers with at least 10 playoff starts, his 2.24 ERA ranks fifth all-time. His 0.83 WHIP, .175 opponents’ batting average and .272 opponents’ slugging percentage each sit second on that list.
Yamamoto has not offered much of a secret formula. Through an interpreter, he said he has largely stuck to the preparation that brought him there. “Honestly, I’m not really sure,” he said when asked about his October record. “I follow the same routine and haven’t made many changes.”
He showed that steadiness in Milwaukee last postseason. Before his NLCS outing against the Brewers, Yamamoto said defeat was not an option, then delivered the first complete game of his career in a 5-1 Dodgers win. He followed with another complete game against the Blue Jays in the World Series, becoming the first postseason pitcher to throw complete games in consecutive starts since Arizona’s Curt Schilling in 2001. He was the first Dodger to do it since Orel Hershiser in 1988.
Only three of Yamamoto’s playoff starts have followed a Dodgers loss, but he owns a 1.23 ERA in those games. For a rotation that includes four frontline options, he has taken on something like a bullpen stopper’s role: the starter called upon when the club needs a halt, not merely another quality outing.
The pitching assignment does not erase the Dodgers’ offensive task. Mookie Betts came up with two runners aboard in the ninth inning Sunday and flied to center field for the final out. He said the lineup has to keep creating pressure while doing more with the chances it gets.
“It is the same message with Skubal,” Betts said. “What the pitchers do matters, of course, but our offense has to come through with more big hits. We have to keep putting pressure on them, as we have been, but we have to find a way to get across the line.”
The historical climb is real. Teams trailing 1-0 in best-of-seven postseason series have recovered to win 70 of 197 times, a 36 percent rate. Under the current 2-3-2 setup, clubs that dropped Game 1 on the road have won 34 of 103 series, or 33 percent. The Dodgers have already been one of the teams that reversed that early deficit with Yamamoto leading the way.
Manager Dave Roberts acknowledged that Henderson presents a real challenge, recalling that the young Brewer has handled the Dodgers effectively in earlier meetings. But Roberts also stressed that a matchup with the major leagues’ best regular-season club was never likely to be simple.
“You cannot enter a long series against the team with baseball’s best record thinking you will just win four games,” Roberts said. “We expected a difficult series. We had opportunities, and they made the plays and pitches when they had to. Now we reset. We have a starter we completely trust, and we need to win a ballgame.”
