TOKYO — Shohei Ohtani will resume playing both ways this season, but he might not become the first Japanese pitcher to ever win a Cy Young Award.
Newcomer Roki Sasaki might not either.
By the end of this season, the distinction could very well belong to the other Japanese pitcher on the Dodgers.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto has pitched only one game, the Dodgers’ 4-1 opening-day victory over the Chicago Cubs in the Tokyo Dome.
Yamamoto has pitched only five innings, his arm not sufficiently built up to pitch any longer with this season starting more than a week earlier than usual because of this overseas voyage to his homeland.
But the five innings Yamamoto pitched on Tuesday night confirmed what coaches and players were whispering about in spring training: Yamamoto returned for his second major league season a new pitcher.
He opened this year throwing harder than he did in 2024, his average fastball velocity nearly 97 mph.
He projected greater confidence.
Yamamoto limited the Cubs to one run, three hits and a walk and struck out four. He effectively used his splitter and confounded his opponents by throwing in an occasional curveball.
The device to communicate with catcher Will Smith malfunctioned at the start of the game?
No problem.
Even after opening the game with a pitch-clock violation that resulted in a leadoff walk to Ian Happ, Yamamoto pitched a scoreless first inning.
Yamamoto struck a greater resemblance to the October hero who defeated the San Diego Padres in the deciding game of the National League Division Series, not the apprehensive newcomer who was up and down over the regular season.
He certainly looked nothing like the pitcher who was unquestionably awful in his first-ever major league start, a one-inning, five-run debacle against the Padres in South Korea.
Yamamoto looked like a Cy Young-caliber pitcher.
He just has to do what he did on Tuesday again and again and again and again, and there are legitimate questions about whether he can. Yamamoto was shut down for close to three months last season because of shoulder problems, and his arm bears the weight of his substantial workloads over eight seasons with the Orix Buffaloes of the Japanese league.
Yamamoto doesn’t have the physical frame of his two countrymen on his team. But of the three Japanese pitchers on the team, he could be the most effective.
The post Hernández: It’s one game, but Yoshinobu Yamamoto looks like a Cy Young-caliber pitcher this season appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
