A starting pitcher throwing one complete game in the postseason is rare enough in this day and age … forget two … forget two in a row.
But Yoshinobu Yamamoto and his rubber arm -- the arm that was ready to pitch in the 19th inning on one day of rest after firing the most recent of those complete games -- did it. And now the Dodgers need him to come up with a third throwback performance in Game 6 of the World Series to save their season.
If anyone can do it, it's Yamamoto. Not only is he coming off the back-to-back complete games against the Brewers and Blue Jays, but the last time Yamamoto was in a situation like this, he threw a 138-pitch, 14-strikeout complete game for the Orix Buffaloes in Game 6 of Nippon Professional Baseball's Japan Series.
So let's take a closer look at Yamamoto's postseason blueprint.
Here's why the Dodgers star has been a complete game machine in the playoffs.
1) He's commanding both of his wipeout secondaries
Yamamoto's two signature pitches, his splitter and his curveball, have been at their best late in the playoffs. He's throwing them right where he wants them.
For his splitter, that means along the edges of the strike zone, down and away to a lefty or down and in to a righty. When he keeps his splitter close to the edges, hitters can't help but swing at it … but Yamamoto's splitter is so nasty, they're either going to whiff or hit a ground ball when it's located precisely.
Here are Yamamoto's splitter locations for his two postseason complete games:
In those two games, 56% of Yamamoto's splitters were on the edges -- within a baseball's width of the borders of the strike zone. That's a huge amount for a pitch like a splitter, which is often thrown as a chase pitch well below the zone. Only a few pitchers, like Paul Skenes with his splinker, throw splitters to the edges so often. Even Yamamoto "only" threw his splitter on the edges 43% of the time during the regular season.
Yamamoto's curveball is a little different. With his curveball, Yamamoto will land it in the zone to get strikes early in the count and set up chases off the corner later in an at-bat.
Here are his curveball locations during his postseason complete games:
Well over half of Yamamoto's curveballs in those two games, 58%, were in the strike zone. Similar to how his edge percentage was unusually high for a splitter, that in-zone percentage is very high for a curveball. (Just look at Yamamoto's teammate Blake Snell for a contrasting example, whose curveball is down and out of the zone the vast majority of the time in an effort to force hitters to swing over the top.)
Yamamoto's curveball works as an in-zone pitch because of how sharp the movement is. He induces 12 inches of horizontal break and 16 inches of vertical drop on his curve, which is three inches more break and six inches more drop than an average big league righty gets.
With that sharp movement, much like his splitter, Yamamoto's curveball can generate both strikeouts and ground balls. Strikeouts get you through a dangerous lineup like the Blue Jays', and ground balls can get you deep into a game.
Eight of Yamamoto's 15 strikeouts across his two complete games came on curveballs and splitters. So did 16 ground-ball outs. Yamamoto has three games this season in which he recorded 10 or more outs on grounders, and two of those were his NLCS and World Series complete games. That was largely thanks to his splitter and curve.
2) He changes his patterns
If you're going to throw a complete game, though, that means you have to get through the opposing lineup at least three, probably four times. And you usually can't do that if you throw the same pitches over and over again.
Yamamoto's complete game efforts have been about a lot more than his splitter and curveball.
The times through the order penalty is well documented in baseball -- the more times that hitters see a pitcher in a game, the harder they hit him. In the playoffs these days, starting pitchers often don't even get to face the other team's best hitters a third time, let alone a fourth time.
Here's how Yamamoto combats that: From one time through the order to the next, his pitch mix never looks the same.
You can now see a breakdown of each pitcher's times-through-the-order pitch usage on the Baseball Savant Gamefeed. Those are Yamamoto's for his two playoff complete games.
In his NLCS complete game against the Brewers:
- Yamamoto started the game with a balanced pitch mix, working in his fastball, curveball, splitter, cutter and sinker.
- By the time he got to the third time through the Milwaukee order, when the damage usually comes, he was able to lean on his big three pitches -- his fastball, splitter and curve -- because he hadn't showed any one of them too much early in the game.
- He even mixed in a surprise late in the game: his slider, which he didn't use until his final time through the order.
- And his most-used pitch was never the same back-to-back times through the order -- he alternated between his four-seam fastball and his splitter as he went through the game.
In his World Series complete game against the Jays:
- Yamamoto heavily deployed his splitter, his very best pitch, to get through Toronto's dangerous hitters at the start of the game.
- The second time through, he was fastball-first, but also mixed in all six of his pitches for the only time in either of his complete games.
- The third time through, he surprised the Blue Jays with his cutter, a pitch he had barely showed either of the first two times through their order.
- And after reducing his splitter usage over the course of the game, he went back to the splitter in the end-game situation -- but with a more balanced surrounding mix than the first time through the order.
Yamamoto's times-through-the-order strategy was also different from game to game. And he'll probably change it up again in Game 6 of the World Series.
3) He steals strikes and outs with unpredictability
It helps that Yamamoto throws six different pitches, a style that aligns with the ever-increasing pitch arsenals in the Major Leagues today.
First and foremost, if you have six pitches that you can throw in different ways as a game goes on, showing hitters those different looks can mitigate the times-through-order penalty.
But for Yamamoto, it's also about how he uses his pitch arsenal during an at-bat -- the multitude of pitches he can throw in any count.
In his postseason gems, he's unleashed a wide array of pitches early in the count, which has let him steal strikes and pitch from ahead or get quick outs when the hitter isn't expecting the pitch that comes.
Look at Yamamoto's pitch selection to start at-bats against the Brewers and Blue Jays, and even just his pitch selection within all early counts:
Yamamoto doesn't just rely on his best pitches to get him through an at-bat from start to finish. He's thrown all six -- four-seamer, sinker, cutter, slider, splitter, curveball -- in early counts.
Throwing his cutter, for example, has allowed Yamamoto to induce early-count groundouts via weak contact, by jamming lefties in or getting righties to roll over the ball away. Yamamoto forced six groundouts on cutters across his two complete games, and five of those groundouts came within the first two pitches of the at-bat.
And Yamamoto's early-count variety means he's not just grooving four-seamers to start at-bats. He only gave the Brewers and Jays nine first-pitch fastballs total, and only threw his four-seamer 18% of the time within the first two pitches of plate appearances. When hitters also have to be ready for pitches like Yamamoto's cutter, curveball and splitter early in the count, it stops them from locking in on a straight fastball to drive. He can always put you away with the fastball later.
And because Yamamoto can throw all those pitches for strikes, he's either getting ahead or getting through the lineup quickly. In his last two games, Yamamoto has a 66% first-pitch strike percentage, over 40% of his plate appearances have been decided while he's ahead in the count, and he's only gone to a three-ball count to four of the 64 hitters he's faced.
Having the arsenal and the command to put yourself in advantageous situations for nine straight innings is the Yamamoto formula.