Yoshinobu Yamamoto outduels Jacob deGrom, makes statement in Dodgers’ win over Rangers

ARLINGTON, Texas — One of the starting pitchers Friday night has won two Cy Young Awards.

The other is making an early case to win one of his own.

For years, Jacob deGrom has (when healthy) been the gold standard of major league pitching. He has a career ERA of 2.54. He is a four-time All-Star and two-time strikeout king. In 2018 and 2019, he won back-to-back Cy Young honors.

However, in the Dodgers’ 3-0 win over deGrom’s Texas Rangers, it was Yoshinobu Yamamoto who was the best pitcher.

Although deGrom gave up just one run over seven strong innings, Yamamoto spun seven scoreless innings at Globe Life Field. Where deGrom struck out seven and walked one, Yamamoto had 10 strikeouts and no free passes.

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It helped the Dodgers (15-6) win the series-opening matchup between the last two World Series champions; a victory also aided by two late insurance runs and two web gems from Max Muncy to escape a ninth-inning jam.

It also further cemented one of the most promising early storylines for this year’s team — affirming Yamamoto, in just his second MLB season, as a legitimate frontline talent seemingly poised for a Cy Young chase.

“He elevated his game to another level,” manager Dave Roberts said. “You could see that he was going against one of the game’s best in deGrom, and he obviously matched him pitch for pitch.”

Friday presented a new challenge for Yamamoto, who entered with a 1.23 ERA in his first four starts. His fastball didn’t have its typical life, sitting a tick lower than normal at 95 mph. His splitter, while still wicked, was a little wilder than usual early on.

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So, the 26-year-old Japanese star dug deeper into his bag of tricks. What he came up with, the Rangers (12-8) were helpless to attack.

“He used his entire repertoire tonight,” Roberts said. “He’s just got so much conviction with every pitch.”

That included his curveball, one of the few areas of weakness in Yamamoto’s otherwise sterling start to the season. Last year, Roberts called the pitch one of the best he’s ever seen from a right-hander. But this season, opponents entered the night batting .429 against it. Yamamoto hadn’t registered a strikeout with it once.

Friday was a different story. Yamamoto snapped off a flurry of big-bending curves, generating four whiffs on 11 swings. It accounted for two of his strikeouts, including one to Joc Pederson that stranded runners at second and third in the third. And of the seven that Texas put in play, only two fell for hits.

“If you look at it in totality, his stuff tonight,” Roberts said, “I thought this was his best outing.”

It was the same story with Yamamoto’s rarely used slider, which he gradually mixed in the second and third time through the lineup to give Rangers hitters a different, more unpredictable look.

He fanned Jake Burger with one to end the fourth, stranding yet another runner at second. He used it again on his 102nd and final pitch, recording a strike ‘em out, throw ‘em out double-play to complete seven innings for only the third time in his MLB career.

“He just has so many ways to get ahead of hitters,” teammate Tommy Edman said. “He can dump in a curveball. He can dot a fastball away. He just has so many ways to get back into the count. Then once he’s up in the count, he’s got a lot of pitches to put them away. He has something for every situation. And he’s been executing all of them.”

Yamamoto’s splitter was also still effective. He threw it 31 times (more than any other offering) while generating seven whiffs on 17 swings (four of them for strikeouts).

More importantly, Yamamoto felt he got ahead in the count more often than he had in his previous outings, mixing in a dose of sinkers and cutters to keep the Rangers constantly off-balance.

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“I feel like my pitch mix is working better and better,” Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda. “Pitch sequence-wise, I’m pretty much leaving it up to our pitching coaches and catchers. But this year, I’ve been able to control every single one of my pitches.”

It all served as a reminder that Yamamoto — whose 0.93 ERA is the best in the National League — is continuing to evolve into a fully finished product. That, after brief flashes of brilliance last season, he is starting to put all the pieces together for a breakout sophomore big-league campaign.

“I do think that right now, he’s the best pitcher in the National League,” Roberts said, offering only Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes as a potential exception.

“He’s been a man on a mission. He’s been unstoppable,” Edman echoed. “I can’t really imagine anyone being any better than him right now.”

The 36-year-old deGrom, who also remains in that conversation even on the backside of his career, was almost as good in Friday’s pitcher’s duel. He yielded just three hits, touched 99 mph with his premier fastball, and retired 13 of the final 14 batters he faced.

But in the first inning, he threw an elevated heater to Edman (who was filling in as the leadoff hitter in Ohtani’s absence) that the utilityman whacked for his NL-leading seventh home run.

It proved to be deGrom’s only real mistake.

The way Yamamoto was dominating, it was one too many.

“I think there’s a sense of pride,” Roberts said when asked what it meant for Yamamoto to outduel deGrom, one of the big-league stars Yamamoto most looked up to early in his career in Japan.

“You look at who you’re opposing,” Roberts added. “He’s one of the game’s best. I know Yoshi’s followed him for years, Cy Young winner. You want to kind of go toe to toe with him on the road. And he did that.”