Los Angeles Dodgers right-handed pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto has played a pivotal role in the starting rotation in his sophomore season.
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While several starters have been sidelined by injury, Yamamoto has remained a constant in a Dodgers rotation that has been in limbo for a majority of the 2025 campaign.
Beyond health, Yamamoto has emerged as the Dodgers’ ace, sporting a 2.51 ERA with 139 strikeouts across 122 innings pitched this season.
Yamamoto currently leads LA starters in innings pitched, which is no surprise given his good health and consistency in 2025. It appears the Dodgers are taking Yamamoto’s workload into account as the right-hander will not be starting Sunday in the series finale against the Toronto Blue Jays.
The Dodgers switched Tyler Glasnow and Yamamoto’s places in the rotation, giving the ace a full week off between starts. Glasnow will take the mound for the Dodgers Sunday, instead.
Yamamto will start for the Dodgers on Monday against the Los Angeles Angels in Anaheim.
Read more: Dodgers Lineup vs Blue Jays: Will Smith Returns, Alex Call Starting
The Dodgers rotation is starting to look as scary as it was dubbed in the offseason, a winter that saw the defending champions ink deals with Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki, Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates.
As a collective, Dodgers starters have given up just six earned runs in 43.2 innings pitched to begin the month of August.
The Dodgers are in the midst of a tight division race, with the San Diego Padres just three games behind LA. The two NL West teams are poised to clash in their next series, which begins next week.
The Dodgers rotation is seemingly hitting its stride at the right time of the season, which is exactly what the front office was counting on with LA’s quiet trade deadline.
Photo Credit: Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images
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3 Responses
When he pitches once per week, Yamamoto is the best starting pitcher in MLB. His ERA is under 1.00 in such starts. He should always pitch on that schedule, as he did in Japan. In today’s game, Pages was lax in picking up the ball at the wall in the first inning which led to a run. It was stupid to have Betts try to steal 2B in the first inning. He should have the stop sign as should Pages. They are poor base stealers, their success rate is too low. Same for Ohtani’s attempted steal of 3B. Never make the last out at 3B. There is a slight advantage to being on 3B with 2 out, over being on 2B with two out. There is a large advantage to being on 3B with only one out over being on 2B with only one out — the runner can score from 3B on a sacrifice fly or even a ground out if there is only one out — not so when there are two out. So, the risk is not worth the reward in stealing 3B with 2 out. If a statistical study was done of this, the result would be this. Never try to steal 3b with 2 out. Unless you know you will be safe, because the pitcher ignores you, the 3d baseman is too far from the bag to cover, and the catcher is terrible at throwing out runners at 3B. Will Smith swung at a 3-0 pitch. That too was a mistake. Conforto probably should have taken the pitch he popped out on, 3-1 count, because the pitcher was wild and he had a good chance for a walk by making the pitcher throw 2 pitches. If he as going to swing at the pitch, he was required to get a hit. Ohtani has been chasing far, far too many pitches out of the strike zone, as he did in the bottom of the 9th inning. He has to be careful of that. There were 5 pitches well outside the strike zone in his last at bat. A walk would have forced the tying run in. The Dodgers make far too may outs on the basepaths. Will Dave Roberts go over this at a team meeting? No.
Like their game vs St Louis, we gave Sundays game away again to Toronto. Yes the bullpen stunk, but again it’s the runners in scoring position dilemma again. This inability to score with runners. In scoring position in combination with bullpen blowing saves will be our undoing
@Roger Hindsight is 20/20. I love how readers know more than the players and managers ??