ATLANTA — Hours before first pitch Friday, Yoshinobu Yamamoto was honored with the National League’s pitcher of the month award for March and April.
Given how he looked in a scoreless six-inning, six-strikeout, one-hit gem against the Atlanta Braves hours later, it might not be the last award he vies for this year.
After establishing himself as a breakout star in the opening month, Yamamoto continued his ascent up the hierarchy of major-league starters in the Dodgers’ 2-1 win Friday at Truist Park.
He carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning and he dropped his early-season earned-run average to an MLB-best 0.90, having yielded just four earned runs in his first 40 innings.
Already in recent weeks, manager Dave Roberts has referred to Yamamoto — the team’s $325-million signing out of Japan two offseasons ago — as the ace of the Dodgers’ pitching staff.
But now, with the Dodgers (22-10) missing two other nine-figure rotation signings in Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow because of shoulder injuries, Yamamoto’s value might be even greater.
“I do believe Yamamoto has gotten to who he is, who he was in Japan and I think he’s a better pitcher [than last year],” Roberts said before the game, citing increased confidence as the biggest difference between Yamamoto’s rookie season last year (when he went 7-2 with a 3.00 ERA while missing several months with a shoulder injury) and his dominant emergence early in this campaign.
“I think that’s from the confidence,” Roberts added. “The conviction he has in himself.”
Friday might have been the best example of Yamamoto’s renewed assuredness yet.
Coming off a season-worst five-inning, three-run start last week against the Pittsburgh Pirates, in which he issued a career-high four walks, Yamamoto responded with one of his best outings this season against the recently resurgent Braves (who are 14-17, but had won nine of their previous 12).
In Yamamoto’s first three innings, the only real danger he encountered was to his own person. With two outs in the first inning, he ducked out of the way of a 107-mph line drive from Matt Olson that Mookie Betts snared at shortstop. To lead off the second, Sean Murphy rifled a 106-mph comebacker that Yamamoto snagged with his glove.
His pitching counterpart, Grant Holmes, wasn’t so lucky.
After matching Yamamoto zero for zero (in both runs and hits) in the early going, the Atlanta right-hander suffered a bad break in the fourth, when Betts smoked a 94-mph comebacker off his backside for the night’s first hit. That was followed by a single from Freddie Freeman, who hit a ground ball Olson failed to snare at first base, and a walk to Teoscar Hernández, loading the bases with one out. Will Smith then lifted a sacrifice fly to right, opening the scoring.
Not until the sixth inning, when Betts continued his resurgence from a deep April slump with a solo home run to left field, did the Dodgers get to Holmes again.
But the way Yamamoto was dealing, the lack of run support posed little problem.
Outside of two walks to Marcell Ozuna — who won an 11-pitch battle in the first inning, and a six-pitch duel in the fourth — the Braves mustered nothing until a two-out double by Austin Riley in the sixth. And even that was immediately negated when Yamamoto induced a groundout from Ozuna to end the inning in the next at-bat.
With Yamamoto likely to start on five days’ rest for the first time this season next week — he had been on a six-days-rest schedule — Roberts ended Yamamoto’s night there, pulling him after 91 pitches.
His replacement, Kirby Yates, gave up a leadoff homer in the seventh to Olson, cutting the Dodgers’ lead in half.
But, even after a 1-hour, 13-minute rain delay at the end of the eighth, the Dodgers held on, with Tanner Scott and Evan Phillips slamming the door to preserve Yamamoto’s fourth victory and improve the team’s record to 5-2 in games he has pitched.
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