Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto has another memorable moment but plenty more in store

Yoshinobu Yamamoto was right there. 

Again.

Three outs.

Three outs from history.

Three outs from a no-hitter.

Once again, Yamamoto couldn’t get them.

He made a mistake and Tristan Peters punished him for it, launching his down-the-middle fastball into the right field stands at Rate Field in Chicago.

The Dodgers held on to beat the White Sox, 7-1, but like the pitch that was detonated by Peters, the no-hitter was gone.

The scene was reminiscent of one from September of last year, when Yamamoto was one out from no-hitting the Orioles, only to give up a home run to Jackson Holliday.

Yamamoto smiled when he was reminded of that in a postgame interview with SportsNet LA.

“Baseball,” he said in Japanese, “is hard.”

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Following the home run by Peters, Yamamoto retired Edgar Quero before he was replaced by Alex Vesia, who registered the final two outs.

Yamamoto’s final line: 8 ⅓ innings, seven strikeouts, no walks, one hit.

In time, memories of this game should become something Yamamoto can reflect on without any feelings of regret.

Based on how he pitched Saturday, and how he has pitched a number of times this season, he will be positioned again to pitch a no-hitter.

He pitched a no-hitter in each of his last two seasons in the Japanese league, and it’s really just a matter of time that he achieves the same level of mastery to do something like that in the major leagues. What he did against the White Sox wasn’t a fluke.

Yamamoto has a half-dozen pitches he can throw at any count, and what chance does a hitter have against him when his fastball is humming the way it was Saturday?

“It’s not just the amount of [different] pitches,” pitching coach Mark Prior said. “It’s the ability to throw them in four different quadrants and have pretty good execution and efficiency with it. That’s what makes him special.”

Was he ever.

The White Sox have a top-five offense in the American League, but Yamamoto made them look as if they were the Angels.

He was always a step or two ahead of them.

“He’s surgical with all his pitches,” Prior said. “Gives different looks. Messes with timing. Attacks the outside part of the plate. I think from a hitter’s perspective, it’s gotta be really hard to zero in on a specific pitch or location. He missed his location a few times today, but for the most part he was living on the edge of the zone the entire time.”

Yamamoto threw cutters on the outside border of the plate to left-handed hitters, sinkers to the opposite side to right-handed hitters. He didn’t have a three-ball count until the fifth inning, and when he found himself in one, he flipped in a curveball for a strike.

He was perfect until the eighth inning, when Chase Meidroth reached base on a fielding error by shortstop Mookie Betts.

“Just a routine ground ball that I missed,” Betts told reporters. “Not making any excuses.”

Yamamoto seemed unaffected by the mistake.

While sitting on the bench between innings, Yamamoto patted Betts on his rear as he walked by. He then went back to reviewing his notebook.

In recent weeks, Yamamoto had been building up to this kind of performance. Since giving up five runs in 6 ⅓ innings in a loss to the Giants on May 12, he is 4-1 with a 1.01 ERA over five starts.

The last time he pitched, he threw seven perfect innings after giving up a couple of first-inning runs to the Angels.

“I think, obviously, every time he takes the mound, we feel he’s got a pretty good chance to do something special,” Prior said. 

What he did in October was a testament to that.

Taking down the final 2 ⅔ innings of the World Series a day after he was the winning pitcher in Game 6, Yamamoto has already produced some of the franchise’s most memorable pitching performances in recent decades. 

But there will be more.

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