TOKYO, JAPAN — Yoshinobu Yamamoto is back in Japan for the offseason, but he doesn’t sound like a guy who left Los Angeles behind. In a Nike Japan talk show at NIKE HARAJUKU themed around “WINNER’S MIND,” Yamamoto kept circling back to what stood out most to him as a Dodger: the daily seriousness, the unglamorous habits, and a clubhouse culture where “winning” is more than a slogan, it’s a shared job description.
The event itself was framed as a look at Yamamoto’s mindset and the “choices” that lead to winning. Nike even billed the talk as a chance to hear how he thinks, in his own words. And when the conversation turned to the Dodgers, Yamamoto didn’t give a marketing answer. He gave the kind of detail that tells you he’s been living it.
“A wonderful team”… and not just because they win
Asked what it was like to join a historic franchise and then actually live inside it, Yamamoto didn’t hesitate.
“They’re a wonderful team,” he said, and then explained what he meant: “For the sake of winning… if there’s something we should do, the players will do anything.” He added that this sounds obvious, but it’s harder than it looks in a big organization. “It’s a large organization, so it’s not easy. But I really felt how strong they are at that.”
That’s the part Dodgers fans recognize. The outside world sees star power. Yamamoto described buy-in. The small stuff. The stuff that doesn’t go viral.
He said many Dodgers players share a mindset of “sacrificing themselves” to win, but he was just as struck by how simple the day-to-day work can be. “What they do every day is very basic,” he said. “They keep doing it little by little. When you spend time with them, you really feel, ‘So this is what top players are like.’”
If you’ve ever watched the Dodgers on a random Wednesday in June and wondered how they keep stacking 162 games without losing their edge, Yamamoto basically answered the question: the edge is built on boring, repeatable routines that never stop being important.
Regular season intensity is real. October is something else.
When the talk moved to the difference between the regular season and the postseason, Yamamoto pushed back on the idea that the regular season is somehow casual.
“In the regular season, everyone is going all out,” he said. “It’s surprising. Even when you face them, they come at you with incredible energy.” He talked about the size and athleticism of MLB players, and how they still run full speed and play hard through the last out.
But then he smiled at the memory of October.
“In the postseason, the heat rises even more,” he said, describing it as a different level of intensity. “It’s not just serious vs. serious. You see something different.”
Dodger fans saw that version of Yamamoto when the lights got hot, the margins got thin, and every pitch felt like it could tilt a series. And Yamamoto made it clear that the postseason didn’t feel like a stage he simply walked onto. It felt like a place you survive one choice at a time.
“I don’t think I’m mentally strong.” That honesty matters.
One of the most revealing parts of the conversation was how Yamamoto described his own nerves. If you’ve watched him pitch in huge games, you might assume he’s ice-cold.
He doesn’t see himself that way.
“As an analysis of myself, I don’t think I’m mentally strong,” he said. “I get nervous every week,” and he described himself as “sensitive” and sometimes feeling like he’s fighting through pressure that could crush him. “I’m doing this while feeling like I might get overwhelmed by nerves.”
That’s not weakness. That’s the truth behind elite performance. Yamamoto’s version of courage isn’t “I never feel fear.” It’s “I feel it, and I still take the ball.”
He also drew a useful line between different kinds of nerves: the kind that comes from fear and lack of confidence, and the kind that comes with adrenaline and pressure. His point was blunt: if you haven’t done the daily work, the nerves turn bad fast.
“If you’re standing there without power because you didn’t practice every day,” he said, “then when you get nervous, you have no way out.” He even laughed at the classic “write something on your palm” trick. “That doesn’t do anything,” he said. The only real solution, in his mind, is what he called “careful” daily living and training.
The World Series moments: the choices he still questioned
Yamamoto’s best Dodgers content in this talk came when he described two moments that tested him: being asked to pitch on short rest in Game 7, and warming up deep into an extra-inning marathon earlier in the series.
On Game 7, he said it felt unfamiliar, almost surreal, because he hadn’t done anything like it since high school baseball. And unlike high school, where the ace “going again” can feel like the obvious move, this was the World Series, surrounded by big leaguers, and he wasn’t sure what the “right” decision was.
“I didn’t know how my body would be on the second day,” he said. “So… I wasn’t sure until the end whether this was really the right thing to do.”
Then he talked about the other game, the one that kept stretching into the night. He wasn’t scheduled to pitch. He was, by his own telling, completely in “watch and support” mode.
“When the game started, I was drinking coffee,” he said. Then he casually dropped the detail that makes baseball fans laugh because it’s so human: “A sushi chef was there that day… so around the third inning I was eating sushi.”
And then reality shifted.
“Before I knew it, I was in the bullpen in the 17th and 18th,” he said, looking back like he still can’t quite believe how fast it happened.
Even in that moment, he admitted he felt torn. Not because he didn’t want to help, but because he didn’t want to accidentally become “the selfish guy” pushing his own idea of what should happen. And here he brought up something that’s easy to forget if you’re watching from home: language can change how quickly you can read a room.
Because he uses an interpreter, he said he can’t always catch the manager’s tone, facial expression, and nuance in real time. “When you go through an interpreter,” he explained, “it’s hard to feel what the other person thinks.” In a chaotic extra-innings situation, that made him second-guess whether he was helping or creating friction.
That’s a different kind of pressure than the radar gun. It’s the pressure of fitting into a winning machine where timing and trust matter.
What surprised him most about MLB life
When a young player asked what surprised him about the majors, Yamamoto didn’t pick velocity or strength. He chose the scale of support and the level of professionalism around recovery and readiness.
The team travel, he noted, is fully chartered. The support system is built to help players move quickly, rest quickly, and show up ready for the next game. “Everything is set up,” he said, “so you can play in good condition.”
But what shocked him even more was the energy of the players themselves. Despite the travel grind, he said everyone stays weirdly lively. “They’re all really energetic,” he said, laughing that he might be the least energetic one. He described teammates being loud on the plane, then showing up at the park and working hard, sweating early, getting after it.
And that led him right back to the Dodgers identity he’s been trying to explain all morning: elite talent paired with relentless daily work. “Even with that much ability,” he said, “they practice this much. That surprised me.”
The Dodgers, Japan, and “Sushi Friday”
If you want a smaller, more charming slice of Dodgers life, Yamamoto delivered it too.
He said Los Angeles is “surprisingly” rich in Japanese food culture, and that he has “two or three” sushi restaurants he loves, good enough that he’d want to go even if they were in Japan. Then he mentioned something that sounds like the kind of clubhouse tradition that starts as a perk and turns into a ritual:
At the stadium, on certain home Fridays, there’s “Sushi Friday,” a little home-game event where sushi shows up for the team. He called it a “small joy” during the season, and joked that if you see him in the dugout on those days, “I’m probably in a good mood.”
It’s a funny detail, sure. But it also fits his bigger point. Winning culture isn’t only about grit. It’s about keeping your mind steady through a long year, giving players small routines and small comforts, and creating an environment where they can stay sharp.
The throughline: choices, again and again
By the end of the talk, Yamamoto’s message stayed consistent: his career has been a chain of goals that grew as soon as he reached them. Pro ball. Then the top level in Japan. Then MLB. Then trying to be “the best” in that world.
“One by one, I cleared goals,” he said. “And then the next one appeared.”
That’s the “Winner’s Mind” theme Nike wanted, and it’s also a pretty clean description of what the Dodgers demand. Talent gets you in the room. Choices keep you there. Yamamoto’s Dodgers comments, more than anything, sounded like a pitcher who has learned what it takes to belong on a team that expects to play deep into October every year.
And if that’s the version of Yamamoto we’re getting going forward, Dodgers fans should feel pretty good. Not because he claims he’s fearless. Because he told you he isn’t, and then he explained how he keeps showing up anyway.
(Nike.com)
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