Last year, Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s season debut was a cause for alarm.
This year it will signal just how much trust the Japanese right-hander has earned entering his second season with the Dodgers.
Even though the team added a two-time Cy Young Award in Blake Snell, a 23-year-old phenom in Roki Sasaki, and returns last year’s opening day starter, Tyler Glasnow, manager Dave Roberts announced this week that it likely will be Yamamoto who gets the ball in the season opener next month in Japan.
“I’m very looking forward to it, to be able to pitch, perform at the Japanese ballpark again,” Yamamoto said Thursday through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda. “And I’d like to get myself ready the best I can.”
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Granted, the setting of the series might have influenced the decision. Yamamoto likely will face Shota Imanaga of the Cubs in the opener at the Tokyo Dome. When Chicago manager Craig Counsell was asked about his decision to start his Japanese star, Counsell joked, “I don’t think I have a choice.”
With Yamamoto, however, the honor also reflects the strides he made in his rookie season, which started with a disastrous debut in South Korea against the San Diego Padres, was nearly derailed by a midseason shoulder injury that sidelined him for almost three months, and ended with the diminutive flamethrower emerging as the Dodgers’ most consistent starter during their postseason run to a World Series title.
“I learned a lot from all the experiences last year,” Yamamoto said after posting a 7-2 record and 3.00 earned-run average in 18 regular-season outings, then a 3.86 ERA in four playoff starts, all victories.
“That kind of helped me to adjust to what I was doing before, and what I needed to do” to be successful in the majors, Yamamoto added.
It was a year of transformation for Yamamoto, who signed a record-breaking $325-million contract last offseason after winning three most valuable player awards in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league.
In his MLB debut in South Korea, he was knocked around for five runs in one inning. His performance over the rest of the first half of the season featured more inconsistencies, with Yamamoto struggling with everything from pitch-tipping to unusually shaky command of the strike zone.
