TORONTO -- Yoshinobu Yamamoto readied himself to receive a short toss from his third baseman, but Max Muncy had too much respect for what Yamamoto had done with that ball to just heave it into the air.
Instead, Muncy drew closer to the mound where Yamamoto had made his mastery and hand-delivered the ball directly into the hurler’s Dodger blue glove. It was Yamamoto’s game, his moment, and, yes, his ball.
And if this turns out to be the Dodgers’ World Series, well, we’ll know a big reason why.
Behind Yamamoto’s complete-game gem and the solo shots swatted by Muncy and catcher Will Smith in a decisive seventh inning, the Dodgers evened up this best-of-seven with a 5-1 win in Game 2 on Saturday night at Rogers Centre.
“Today’s game, we had to win,” Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda. “So that's just how I treated this game.”
This game was a reminder of why the Dodgers were favorites in this Fall Classic in the first place.
Yes, the Blue Jays’ deep, patient and powerful lineup is absolutely capable of infiltrating the iffy middle of the L.A. bullpen.
But not if the Dodgers’ starter refuses to surrender.
Save for a sacrifice fly manufactured in the third, Yamamoto, the Japanese flamethrower signed to the largest pitching pact in history, defended the defending champs from any of the mid-inning agony they had endured in Game 1 by going the distance. He allowed just a run on four hits with no walks and eight strikeouts, retired each of the last 20 batters he faced and became the first pitcher to throw a complete game in successive postseason starts since the Diamondbacks’ Curt Schilling in 2001.
“That's pretty impressive, with a layoff in between,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said of Yamamoto’s outing. “I think he made it hard for us to make him work. He was in the zone, split was in and out of the zone. It was a really good performance by him.”
That wasn’t the only means by which the Dodgers roiled Rogers Centre.
The Blue Jays had brought back Joe Carter to throw out a ceremonial first pitch and relive his touch-’em-all triumph from Game 6 in 1993, when he lifted the walk-off winner over the left-field wall. But after they were done playing that majestic moment on repeat, Smith and Muncy were the ones launching long balls to left off an otherwise great Kevin Gausman.
“Huge relief,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of those swats.
Relief from relief, really.
With a withered circle of trust in the ’pen, Roberts welcomed Yamamoto’s outsized contribution to what was a fast-paced, old-school pitchers’ duel.
The “Game 2 starter” label tends to suggest second-best. But both Yamamoto and Gausman were overqualified for the assignment.
Yamamoto threw 61 innings more than anybody else on the Dodgers’ staff this season, with a terrific 167 ERA+ (67% better than league average) along the way. Gausman has been Toronto’s rotation anchor for the last four seasons -- a span in which he ranked fourth in MLB in innings (733 2/3) and third in strikeouts (793) -- and was only pushed back to Game 2 because of the inning he had thrown in relief in the Jays’ ALCS clincher five days earlier.
In other words, these were aces in every definition other than assignment.
And they pitched like it.
Yamamoto was throwing his kitchen-sink collection at the Toronto bats and had all of it working. The sick split, the yo-yo curve, the fiery four-seam, some cutters, sliders and sinkers. Everything zipping and zooming and moving and grooving. In Game 1, the Blue Jays had been successful at waiting out Blake Snell on a night in which his command came undone. But Yamamoto would not budge.
“I was trying to go into the game relaxed, but it’s a World Series,” Yamamoto said. “Kind of early on, I was throwing with unnecessary tension. I just adjusted that as the game went on.”
Gausman wasn’t giving in, either. The Dodgers had struck first in the first, when Freddie Freeman doubled with two out and Smith singled to bring him home. But Gausman then retired the next 17 batters faced.
Until Smith came to bat in the seventh.
The tight tilt was looking for someone to break the tension, and Smith, who had battled a hairline fracture in his right hand late in the season and played through pain, had his first extra-base hit of the postseason. With one out and none on, Gausman’s 3-2 offering to Smith was up and in, and Smith got his hands in and turned on the pitch to lift it into the second deck, just inside the left-field line.
Just like that, Gausman’s run of excellence was over, and the Dodgers were back on top, 2-1.
One out later, it was Muncy, already established as the Dodgers’ all-time postseason home run leader, sending one out in October yet again. Gausman’s 2-2 fastball to the left-handed-hitting Muncy was up and away, and Muncy reached out and touched it to go oppo into the Blue Jays bullpen -- a virtually identical landing spot to Carter’s famous Fall Classic four-bagger.
“Two good pitches to two really good hitters,” said Gausman. “That was the difference.”
Though the 3-1 lead felt immense given the way Yamamoto was motoring along, the Dodgers did add another pair off the Jays’ top setup man, Louis Varland, in the eighth.
Yamamoto didn’t need it, though. He struck out the side in the bottom of the inning, then came back out in the ninth to finish what he started.
“He had that look tonight,” Roberts said.
And it looks like we have ourselves a Series.