ARLINGTON, Texas — One of the starting pitchers Friday night has won two Cy Young Awards.
The other is making an early case to win one of his own.
For years, Jacob deGrom has (when healthy) been the gold standard of major league pitching. He has a career ERA of 2.54. He is a four-time All-Star and two-time strikeout king. In 2018 and 2019, he won back-to-back Cy Young honors.
In the Dodgers’ 3-0 win over deGrom’s Texas Rangers, however, Yoshinobu Yamamoto was the best pitcher.
Although deGrom gave up just one run over seven strong innings, Yamamoto spun seven scoreless innings at Globe Life Field. Where deGrom struck out seven and walked a batter, Yamamoto had 10 strikeouts and no free passes.
It helped the Dodgers win this series-opening matchup between the last two World Series champions, even though they were without Shohei Ohtani, who went on the paternity list in anticipation of the birth of his first child.
And it further cemented one of the most promising early storylines of this Dodgers season — continuing to affirm Yamamoto, in just his second MLB season, as someone who could be competing for hardware this fall.
Friday presented a new challenge for Yamamoto, who entered the game with a 1.23 ERA in his first four starts. His fastball didn’t have its usual life, sitting a tick lower than normal at 95 mph. His splitter, while still wicked, was a little wilder than typical.
So, the 26-year-old Japanese star dug deeper into his bag of tricks. What he came up with kept the Rangers off balance.
A rare area of weakness for Yamamoto early this season had been his curveball. Though manager Dave Roberts last year called it one of the best he’s seen from a right-hander, opponents entered the night batting .429 against it. Yamamoto hadn’t registered a strikeout with it once.
On this night, though, Yamamoto snapped off a flurry of big-bending curves to the Rangers. It generated four whiffs on 11 swings. It accounted for two of his strikeouts, including one to Joc Pederson that stranded runners at second and third in the third. And of the seven that Texas put in play, only two fell for hits.
As Yamamoto worked deeper into the game, he also mixed in his rarely used slider, giving Rangers hitters a different look the second and third time through.
He fanned Jake Burger with one to end the fourth, stranding yet another runner at second. He used it again on his 102nd and final pitch, recording a strike ‘em out, throw ‘em out double-play to complete seven innings for only the third time in his MLB career.
Yamamoto’s splitter was still effective, totaling seven whiffs (four of them strikeouts) on 17 swings. And with his four-seamer playing down, he incorporated more sinkers and cutters into his arsenal.
It all served as a reminder that Yamamoto — whose 0.93 ERA is now best in the National League — is much more than a two-weapon pitcher. That, after brief flashes of brilliance last year, he is starting to put all the pieces together for a breakout sophomore season.
On the backside of his career at age 36, deGrom was almost as good in what turned into a vintage pitcher’s duel. He yielded just three hits, and retired 13 of the final 14 batters he faced. But back in the first inning, he threw an elevated fastball to leadoff man Tommy Edman (who was filling in for Ohtani at the top of the batting order). Edman whacked it for his NL-leading seventh home run.
It proved to be deGrom’s only real mistake.
But the way Yamamoto was dominating, it was one too many.
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