Hours after he was named to the National League All-Star team, Yoshinobu Yamamoto gave the Los Angeles Dodgers the kind of start Octobers are built on: seven scoreless innings, three hits, two walks and 10 strikeouts in a 3-0 win over the San Diego Padres on Saturday night at Dodger Stadium.
Yamamoto needed exactly 100 pitches to get through seven, and San Diego never mounted a serious threat against him. The outing lowered his ERA to 2.49 and lifted his record to 9-5, with 100 strikeouts now in 104 2/3 innings. Manager Dave Roberts said afterward that Yamamoto “pitched like an All-Star” and gave the club a chance to reset its bullpen — the quiet, structural benefit of a long start that matters more in a pennant race than any single win in July.
Freddie Freeman supplied most of the offense, going 2 for 3 with a walk, two RBIs and his 15th home run of the season. Andy Pages singled in the other run. That was all the margin required. Brock Stewart and Alex Vesia bridged the eighth, and Will Klein struck out two in a clean ninth for the save.
The win was the Dodgers’ third straight and their eighth in ten games, pushing them to 59-31 and stretching the National League West lead over San Diego to 15 games. The Padres, shut out and sent to their eighth consecutive loss, look less like a division rival by the day. None of that is the real story, though. The regular season has stopped being a question for this team; the question is what the October rotation looks like, and Saturday was Yamamoto’s clearest answer yet. A No. 1 starter who can hand a rested bullpen a lead in the eighth inning is the thing that wins short series, and the Dodgers just watched theirs do exactly that on a holiday night.
The series with San Diego concludes Sunday at Dodger Stadium.
