By admin 
We’ve weirdly gotten used to seeing Shohei Ohtani look mortal over the last several weeks.
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But Yoshinobu Yamamoto?
None of us saw him unraveling, certainly not Will Smith.
The Dodgers’ struggling catcher – now one for 23 this postseason at the plate – could have altered the course of Monday’s NLCS Game 2 disaster if he hadn’t kept both of his team’s ABS challenges in his pocket.
But once the Milwaukee Brewers got going, unimpeded, there was no looking back. They outclassed the two-time defending World Series champions, winning 7-4, and lead the best-of-seven series 2-0 as it heads back to L.A.
The Dodgers have learned to lean on Yamamoto. But this time, the 28-year-old right-hander lasted only 2⅔ innings – as long as his scoreless, 34-pitch relief appearance in Game 7 of the World Series last year, but with a vastly different outcome.
In that span Monday, Yamamoto made 75 pitches and gave up three runs on four hits. This time, he really could have used even a little bit of help from his friends – at the plate, where the Dodgers got only three hits, and behind it.
Yamamoto would’ve benefited from fielders with enough foots peed to track down pop fouls (two of which fell to extend at-bats), and from a catcher with a sense of urgency to stop the bleeding before they needed a tourniquet.
But Smith said he assumed Yamamoto, the Dodgers’ ace of the aces and last year’s World Series MVP, had everything under control. Smith assumed those challenges would better serve the team in the later innings.
But Smith also failed to respect how dangerous and dug-in the Brewers are. Didn’t appreciate that the time to stop Milwaukee is now or forever hold your peace.
The Dodgers not only left Milwaukee with both challenges remaining (both Mookie Betts and Kyle Tucker successfully challenged strike calls), but the Brewers’ Brice Turang got the benefit of a first-inning double and third-inning walk when those at-bats instead should have ended in strikeouts.
“It was kind of early in the game. We kind of had him on the ropes,” Smith said of Turang. “I figured we could get him out there. The walk one was a bummer. But it happens. It’s baseball.”
A successful challenge and strikeout would have saved a run in the first inning, because Turang came right around to score on William Contreras’ single.
A second successful challenge and strikeout – and Yamamoto seemed to want to challenge, pointing to his head – would have helped the Dodgers evade the waking nightmare of the third inning.
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Yamamoto made 36 pitches and got only two outs in the inning, a taxing tally that included, two batters after Turang, a 12-pitch walk to Jake Bauers, which was a career high for both pitcher and hitter. Yamamoto exited with the Dodgers trailing, 3-2.
“I thought about [challenging],” Yamamoto said, through an interpreter, of his sixth pitch to Turang, which appeared to catch the corner. “But that was too fine a line on the strike zone. So I just didn’t know.”
The Dodgers’ steadiest pitcher and coolest cat actually seemed miffed on the mound when Smith didn’t challenge – as shocking a sight as his early exit.
Yamamoto’s performance was a gut punch and a psyche-rattling blow for the Dodgers. A parachute not opening. An emergency call going unanswered.
The Dodgers’ starting pitching is what we expected would give them a real shot at a three-peat, despite them going 36-36 against .500 or better ballclubs this season.
Instead, the Brewers got to Tarik Skubal, last year’s American League Cy Young winner, in Game 1. And in Game 2, they got to Yamamoto, who had the second-best WHIP (walks plus hits per inning pitched, .087) in the big leagues this season behind only Brewers star Jacob Misiorowski.
Yamamoto held hitters to a .182 batting average, third-best in baseball.
He came into Monday’s game having earned the win and given up one run or none in each of his last five postseason appearances, tied with Curt Schilling (1993-2001) for the longest such streak in history, per OptaSTATS.
And Yamamoto had Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy raving about his diverse pitching arsenal – “He can cut you, he can sink you” – only for his Brewers to remind us Yamamoto bleeds and that there are days when his splitter doesn’t cut it.
“He’s a human being too,” Betts said. “I think everyone is so used to him being a robot that if he didn’t go eight innings with no hits or whatever then it wasn’t Yamamoto. It shows that he’s a human being and playoff baseball is hard.”
“Our job now,” third baseman Max Muncy said, “is to win several games and give him another chance because I know that next time out he’s going to dominate.”
It’s only right that the Dodgers retain faith in Yamamoto, but they should have learned that they shouldn’t have too much – sometimes he could use a challenge too.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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