Dodgers Interview: Yamamoto on Staying Focused in the Face of Bad Luck
“I just reset and focused on one out at a time.”
LOS ANGELES — The night began with a sting. A two-run misplay in right put the Dodgers in a hole before most fans sat down. Yoshinobu Yamamoto didn’t flinch. He gathered himself, found his lanes, and gave the club 6.2 scoreless frames to flip the game and the series. Afterward he explained how he steadied the wheel and why the sixth-inning escape turned the park electric.
“My condition was good from the start, but in the first inning my control and my delivery weren’t fully together,” Yamamoto said. “I put some runners on, but because I felt good physically, I stayed calm, watched their hitters, and kept pitching my game. That led to the pitches getting better and better.”
Dave Roberts has talked all year about length from his starters. Yamamoto said that assignment is simple to understand and hard to do. “Even one more inning helps the team,” he said. “In the sixth we got into a big jam, but I worked through it and still had something left. I told them I could get one more hitter.”
That jam was the game’s hinge. A run would have changed everything. “It was still a one-run game, and I didn’t want to allow even a hit,” he said. “From the first hitter I told myself to stay composed and hit good spots. Getting that first out was huge because it was a ball the runners couldn’t start on. That first out made a big difference.”
The final showdown with Elly De La Cruz showcased conviction more than velocity. “We went with more curveballs, and his reactions told me it was effective,” Yamamoto said. “I had been throwing good pitches all night, so I trusted it and threw it with confidence.”
He also circled back to the very first inning to explain the mental reset that defined his outing. “They hit the splitter to right for the run-scoring hit, and I really wanted to put up a zero there,” he said. “I got hit, so I just switched my mind and focused on taking outs one by one.”
That was the theme: reset, execute, repeat. “I stayed calm and looked at the opponent in front of me,” Yamamoto said. “When you do that, the ball gets better, and the game comes back to you.”
For the Dodgers, it did. And it started with their starter deciding the first inning would be the last bad moment of his night.
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