TORONTO – He is a postseason folk hero whose dominance spans multiple hemispheres and whose name will now be included among the greatest ever to take this stage. He is the first pitcher to twirl consecutive complete games in the postseason in 14 years, and the pitcher who sprang the Los Angeles Dodgers back to life in this World Series because he simply did not relent.
October is Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s month now, as he shut down a Toronto Blue Jays lineup that has terrorized opponents all the way through the postseason field. Yamamoto did so by twirling nine more innings Saturday in a 5-1 victory to level the World Series at a game apiece.
After a Blue Jays rout in Game 1 on Friday, those at the Rogers Centre for Game 2 were eager to crackle and send a statement to a Dodgers juggernaut looking to repeat.
Yamamoto’s response: another impressive addition to his fast-growing postseason resume. He delivered the first complete game in a World Series since Johnny Cueto did it for the Kansas City Royals in 2015. Yamamoto is the first Dodgers pitcher to go the distance in the World Series since Orel Hershiser in 1988.
“He had that look tonight,” manager Dave Roberts said.
“Today’s game, we had to win,” Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda. “So that’s just how I treated this game.”
8 Ks in the Six from Yoshinobu. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/wifII1fT2P
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 26, 2025
Entering this October, Major League Baseball hadn’t seen a postseason complete game in eight seasons, not since Justin Verlander mowed down the New York Yankees in the 2017 American League Championship Series.
Then Yamamoto did it twice in as many starts. He surrendered a leadoff home run before going the distance to hold down the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series and crafted another masterpiece on Saturday to become the first pitcher since Curt Schilling in 2001 to throw a complete game in consecutive postseason starts.
“He’s in some uncharted territory for pitchers right now,” pitching coach Mark Prior said.
“I’ve been playing a long time, but I haven’t ever seen anything like this,” said Mookie Betts.
Yamamoto did not know as recently as a year ago that he was on his way to joining names like Hershiser, Schilling and Verlander. He wore the burden of the richest contract in baseball history for a pitcher, with $325 million reasons to try to prove he was worthy of the game’s highest stage. A shoulder injury robbed Yamamoto of much of his rookie season. His 3.00 ERA in 2024, while strong, did not feel like a true representation of what he could be.
Yamamoto lacked confidence. He was tentative. His uncertainty presented itself in his first-ever postseason start, when the San Diego Padres knocked him out of a 2024 NLDS game after the third inning and ambushed him for five runs. The Dodgers survived to force a decisive winner-take-all Game 5 in that series and get Yamamoto back on the mound.
In the days leading up to that outing, Kiké Hernández asked to take the downtrodden Yamamoto to breakfast. The two men shared a language barrier, but Hernández wanted to reassure the Dodgers’ budding young star.
So Hernández asked how Yamamoto was feeling. Yamamoto had dominated in Japan, but acknowledged he felt unsettled trying to figure out how to attack American hitters. Much of the pitcher’s game-planning meetings centered on how to get those hitters out, rather than how to best deploy his deep and diverse arsenal.
That clicked something for Hernández to counter with.
“Adjustments are a thing that you do when you fail at something,” Hernández recalled telling Yamamoto. “That’s when you adjust. But you haven’t failed at anything. You adjust after you fail, and in the meantime, you do you.”
The meal and pep talk served their purpose.
Yamamoto’s final line: nine innings, four hits, one run and eight strikeouts on 105 pitches (73 strikes). (Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
Days later, Yamamoto delivered five scoreless innings as the Dodgers vanquished the Padres. Weeks later, in his first World Series start, he pitched into the seventh inning against the New York Yankees and exited the Dodger Stadium mound to a standing ovation. The resume has been built from there. Since that first-ever postseason start, Yamamoto has made seven more October appearances, tossing 44 1/3 innings with a staggering 1.62 ERA. Consider it the origin story of a postseason legend that’s becoming richer by the outing.
Nights like Saturday showcased Yamamoto at his best. He made perhaps one true mistake all night, leaving an 0-2 sinker out over the heart of the plate to start the game that Blue Jays leadoff hitter George Springer bashed into the corner for a double. Nathan Lukes lifted a soft single to put runners on the corners with no one out, with the Dodgers’ early 1-0 first-inning lead looking more perilous by the pitch as Vladimir Guerrero Jr. stepped into the box.
Yamamoto fell behind in the count 2-0 to Guerrero, who has tormented every pitcher to cross his path since the calendar flipped to October. Yamamoto did not budge. He threw his best pitch, a splitter, that Guerrero swung through. Yamamoto followed with another splitter. Then another. Then another, bullying the bully with his best stuff. With Guerrero ready for the pitch, he flipped a 2-2 curveball that Guerrero took a hack at and caught only air. It was just Guerrero’s fourth strikeout all postseason.
“That’s pretty much what I told him. …. Trust that your s— is better than their s— even if that specific pitch is the best pitch that that guy hits,” Hernández said Saturday, thinking back to that message as he watched the at-bat against Guerrero. “Trust that your best is not what he hits from other people. Your best can still overpower people and get people out.”
Yamamoto completed the tightrope walk for a scoreless first. He fell behind Alejandro Kirk, but got him to line out. Daulton Varsho had a 3-0 count against Yamamoto, yet looked as if he were the one on his heels when Yamamoto unleashed a splitter, then a fastball, and finally, another curveball to freeze him for another strikeout.
“That was special,” Hernández said.
That first inning put Saturday’s masterpiece in jeopardy because it required 23 pitches and induced the kind of stress he never had to deal with in his start against the Brewers. The Blue Jays thrive on running up pitch counts and raising cortisol levels, striking out less often than any team in the majors. Toronto’s leadoff man reached in both the second and third innings, as well, only adding to Yamamoto’s degree of difficulty.
But after that, Yamamoto didn’t make it look that difficult at all. Kirk’s sacrifice fly in the third inning pushed across Toronto’s only run, but also started a string of 20 consecutive batters that Yamamoto retired to end the night. After needing 23 pitches to get through the first inning, he needed just 82 to get through the final eight.
No one stirred in the Dodger bullpen until the ninth. There was never even a conversation about having anyone start the inning to try to finish it.
“It was a no-brainer,” Roberts said.
Everything was dialed. Everything was precise. Everything on Yamamoto’s terms. Between innings, he scribbled what he called “strategic notes” into a notebook as a way of driving home the key points of staying in the zone. That zone might as well have been ripped straight out of Hernández’s message: make them adjust to you, not the other way around.
“He’s executing at a very high level right now,” Prior said. “That’s him. He’s doing it.”
“It’s four or five pitches and it feels like he could hit a flea with it,” said Freddie Freeman. “He can throw it wherever he wants. Sets up hitters. Understands hitters’ swings. He’s just incredible.”
With Yamamoto, anything appears possible. That is something, it appears, he believes.
Same for the man who helped reinforce that belief in himself just 12 months ago.
“It’s just not normal,” Hernández said, for Yamamoto to do what he does.
“You’re not supposed to keep getting better, and he’s finding a way to do it. Like, what’s his ceiling? Yeah, you don’t know if there’s a ceiling there. The sky could be the limit for him.”
