The Los Angeles Dodgers are poised to make baseball history when they host the Cleveland Guardians on Wednesday to finish their first homestand of the season.
When right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto takes the mound, the Dodgers will become the first major league team to start a Japanese-born pitcher in three consecutive games.
Roki Sasaki started Monday’s series opener won by the Guardians 4-2, while Shohei Ohtani started Tuesday’s game, which the Dodgers won 4-1.
Ohtani set a high standard for Yamamoto to follow, allowing one hit over six scoreless innings, with six strikeouts.
Yamamoto (1-0, 3.00 ERA) gave up two runs on five hits over six innings in an 8-2 Opening Day victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks. His lone career start against Cleveland came last season, when he gave up two runs over six innings to earn the win.
Yamamoto became the first Los Angeles pitcher to start consecutive Opening Day games since Clayton Kershaw opened eight consecutive seasons from 2011-2018.
In between his World Series heroics — when he won Games 6 and 7 — and his turn on Opening Day, Yamamoto pitched for Team Japan this spring in the World Baseball Classic. Could a Cy Young Award be in store after his World Series MVP Award from last season?
“There’s high competition; there are a lot of great pitchers out there,” Yamamoto said through an interpreter. “But I hope that I get there.”
At the plate, Ohtani had a single Tuesday but is just 3-for-15 with no extra-base hits. Ohtani and Freddie Freeman both are hitting .200, while Mookie Betts is batting just .158. The Dodgers are 12th in MLB in both slugging percentage (.395) and OPS (.713).
“I feel like if you’re looking at our at-bats, we’re swinging at the right pitches,” the Dodgers’ Will Smith said. “We’re hitting the ball hard. … We’re not going to go out there and score 10 runs every night. We’re going to have to find ways to win, and that’s what we’ve done so far.”
The Guardians will send right-hander Gavin Williams to the mound in the series finale. Williams (0-1, 5.40 ERA) had seven strikeouts in his season debut against the Seattle Mariners last week but also walked six batters.
“I was trying in warm-ups and in the game, trying to do a little bit of everything,” he said. “Just trying to fix that and honestly wasn’t doing it the way I should have been doing it.”
Cleveland saw rookie Chase DeLauter depart in the first inning Tuesday because of a left foot contusion. The injury happened when he fouled a ball off his back foot.
DeLauter hit four home runs during the first three regular-season games of his career last week and remains the only Guardians player to go deep this season.
“Chase is obviously sore, but negative on the X-rays,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “(Wednesday) was a planned off day for Chase anyway, so this will give him two days off. He wasn’t gonna be in lineup anyway.”
Rhys Hoskins had the Guardians’ only hit against Ohtani, a double in the fourth inning. Brayan Rocchio spoiled Los Angeles’ shutout bid with an RBI single in the ninth inning against right-hander Edwin Diaz.
–Field Level Media
