Tireless Yamamoto named World Series MVP -- on zero days' rest!
Anthony Castrovince
@castrovinceTORONTO --Yoshinobu Yamamoto didn’t go to his hotel room; he went to the trainer’s room.
It was the aftermath of a Game 6 in which he had gone six innings for his second win of this World Series and his fourth of this postseason. Typically, it would be a time for a starting pitcher to decompress, not to press on. But Yamamoto started doing stretching and soft tissue work like someone who …
Well, like someone who planned to pitch, again, the next day, in Game 7.
“It kind of got circulated through some different channels and, ultimately, to some of the front office people and some of the staff,” said pitching coach Mark Prior. “It went through various people, but the message was the same: He woke up this morning feeling good.”
And he ended the night as the Willie Mays World Series Most Valuable Player.
Yamamoto’s 2 2/3 innings of scoreless relief earned him yet another win in the biggest win of all -- the Dodgers’5-4, 11-inning triumph inGame 7 of the World Series on Saturday night at Rogers Centre.
As the Dodgersclinched their second consecutive crown, there was no doubt which one of their many stars had earned the honor. Yamamoto gave themnine complete innings of one-run ball in Game 2 to avenge their loss a night earlier. He helped them avoid elimination byallowing just one run again in those six innings in Game 6.
And in the first relief outing of his MLB career, he was thrown into the fire with two on in the ninth, escaped that jam and then handled both of the extra innings of an instant classic for a Dodgers team that was thin in the ’pen all postseason.
“When I started in the bullpen before I went in, to be honest, I was not really sure if I could pitch up there to my best ability,” Yamamoto said through an interpreter. “But as I started getting warmed up, because I started making a little bit of an adjustment, and then I started thinking I can go in and do my job.”
Oh, and did we mention Yamamoto even made himself available in Game 3?
He was warming whenFreddie Freeman smacked the Dodgers’ walk-off winner in the bottom of the 18th. Teammates Shohei Ohtani and Roki Sasaki rushed to celebrate with Yamamoto in that moment, because he -- and the rest of the Dodgers -- knew what it meant for Yamamoto to raise his hand in that moment.
In a modern game in which pitchers are so fiercely protected, to see a prized piece like the 27-year-old Yamamoto take on 17 2/3 innings over three appearances in the span of a week in the World Series (on the heels ofa complete-game gem Game 2 of the NLCS against the Brewers, no less) was sort of staggering.
“It's unheard of,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, “and I think that there's a mind component, there's a delivery, which is a flawless delivery, and there's just an unwavering will. I just haven't seen it. I really haven't. You know, all that combined. And there's certain players that want moments and there's certain players that want it for the right reasons. But Yoshi is a guy that I just completely implicitly trust, and he's made me a pretty dang good manager.”
Yamamoto went 3-0 with a 1.02 ERA in the Fall Classic. He’s just the 14th pitcher to notch three wins in a single World Series and the first since Hall of Famer Randy Johnson did it for the Diamondbacks in 2001. He is the first pitcher with three road wins in a single World Series and just the fourth pitcher to win both Game 6 and Game 7, joining Johnson (2001), Harry Brecheen (1946) and Ray Kremer (1925).
The Dodgers knew they were getting something special when they signed the Nippon Professional Baseball star and his kitchen-sink arsenal to a record-breaking 12-year, $325 million pact prior to 2024, despite him never having thrown a pitch in MLB.
But they could not have known they were getting this.
“I think it goes back to what he does to prepare to pitch,” Prior said. “He's always looking to get better. He's always looking to perfect his craft. He's always looking to figure out a way to get hitters out, different ways. He can give you different looks with the same guy on the mound. … I mean, this playoff run, if I was sitting at home watching it, it's pretty fun to watch. He's been as dominant as you've seen in a long time.”
Yamamoto might have come to MLB with a lot to prove, but he’s won over his clubhouse with both his pitching and his personality.
“One of the hardest-working, most focused people I've ever met,” teammate Tyler Glasnow said. “I'm just so happy for him. He won this series for us. The whole postseason, he shoved, and I'm just extremely happy for him. He's the best dude I know.”
Yamamoto is the second Japanese-born player to win the World Series MVP, joining Hideki Matsui of the 2009 Yankees. Japanese pitchers used to come to MLB with concerns that they wouldn’t be able to adjust to the schedule in which starters would go every fifth day, rather than once per week in NPB. If anything, though, the MLB game has begun to more closely reflect NPB, with five days’ rest becoming the new norm.
And then Yamamoto comes along in this 2025 postseason and rewrites what is even considered with regard to the modern October workload.
“I knew he was capable of a lot, I didn't know he was capable of what he did [in Game 7], because I didn't think anyone was capable of doing what he did,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “For him to have the same stuff that he had the night before is absolutely mind-blowing to me.”
When Friedman got a text after Game 6 that Yamamoto was getting treatment to be ready for Game 7, he scoffed.
“Oh, that’s great, he really cares,” Friedman thought to himself. “But the likelihood of that is pretty low.”
Not so low, as it turns out.
“For him to have the same stuff that he had the night before,” said Friedman, “is really the greatest accomplishment I’ve ever seen on a Major League Baseball field.”
Maybe Friedman, who of course witnessedOhtani hitting three homers and throwing six scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts in the NLCS capper andgetting on base nine times in World Series Game 3, was a bit of a prisoner of the moment with that remark. Or maybe it just goes to show that Ohtani is not the Dodgers’ only Japanese-born marvel.
“I did everything I was supposed to do,” said Yamamoto, “and I’m so happy I was able to win this with these teammates.”
They truly could not have done it without him.