Ice Cube opened Game 2 of the World Series in Los Angeles by manifesting a “Good Day” for the Dodgers. Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the Dodgers bullpen put the Yankees offense in a freezer, while the Los Angeles bats got to Carlos Rodón. But in the seventh inning the sun set on the good day when Shohei Ohtani injured his shoulder on a stolen base attempt. After the game, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Ohtani suffered a subluxation of the shoulder and that further testing would be required, but his strength and range of motion were good. With the severity of the injury still unclear, a 4-2 win and 2-0 series lead for now is clouded by uncertainty.
Prior to the vibe shift, the game began with Yamamoto on the mound for his fourth start of the postseason. His performance in his prior starts was shaky – allowing five runs in three innings in his first meeting with the Padres, zero runs in five innings in a second face off with San Diego, and two runs in 4 1/3 innings against the Mets. The Dodgers have been managing Yamamoto’s workload since his return from a right rotator cuff strain on September 10, and he hadn’t pitched more than five innings in a start since June 7, when he silenced the Yankees in the Bronx for seven scoreless innings. In Game 2, Yamamoto’s second start against the Yankees, he was nearly as effective as he was in that first outing: He one-hit New York over 6 1/3 innings, allowing just one earned run on a Juan Soto home run. Soto, who scored both Yankees runs in Game 2, was their only player whose bat avoided the deep freeze.
For Yamamoto to reach the level of effectiveness he showcased on Saturday night, he relies on a variety of offspeed pitches to keep hitters from sitting on his four-seamer, which is his worst pitch by Stuff+ with a grade of 84. He kept the Yankees off balance by disregarding standard sequencing practices. Instead he deployed his curveball, splitter, slider, and cutter to trap the Yankees offense in a web of sequencing chaos.
An approach like Yamamoto’s requires a certain amount of precision both in terms of movement and command. His arsenal is designed to look the same out of his hand and follow the same trajectory until after the hitter has to decide whether to swing. Additionally, each pitch needs to finish in a competitive location to entice swings and keep the hitter’s eye level moving to reduce the odds of a swing making flush contact. Yamamoto failed to hit his spots early in the game, frequently missing up and off the plate despite catcher Will Smith’s low target. He needed at least six pitches for each of the first three hitters and yielded his only two walks of the game during the first two innings. Eventually, Yamamoto began working more efficiently. He left the game with one out in the seventh, having thrown 86 pitches, his peak since returning from the IL. Before he could settle in, though, he had to face Soto for a second time. It was the one true blemish to his outing.
Soto stepped in the box with two outs in the third inning, the bases empty, and his team down by one run, ready to work his voodoo to control the plate appearance in a way that hitters aren’t supposed to be able to do. In a batter-pitcher matchup, the pitcher acts and the hitter reacts. Unless you’re Juan Soto. Imbued by some magical force, Soto casts a spell upon pitchers, compelling them to throw the pitch of his choosing. Yamamoto resisted as long as he could, and for a moment, it seemed he might be immune.
After missing way up and away with a first-pitch four-seamer, Yamamoto went to his splitter for a called strike at the bottom of the zone. If anything can get in Soto’s head it’s a called strike on the edge of the zone that he thinks is a ball. Perhaps because his batting eye is so finely tuned and so ingrained as part of his identity, it calls into question his sense of self. He chatted briefly with the umpire about the location of the pitch, attempting to recalibrate his eye in real time. Yamamoto immediately went back to the splitter. He had not thus far been able to locate his four-seamer down, and missing up with a fastball to Soto is a certain disaster, so why not go back to the pitch designed for the bottom edge of the zone, especially since Soto didn’t seem to see the first one well? This time Soto was thinking along with Yamamoto and Smith, looking for the same pitch in the same location, and with his recently recalibrated eye, he’d be ready. In fact, he started to swing before recognizing it would be slightly outside, so instead, he checked his swing. Or so he thought. On appeal, the third base umpire said he offered at the pitch and the count went to 1-2.
This should’ve been a pitcher’s count, but there are no pitcher’s counts when the batter is Juan Soto. He took a third splitter for a ball and fouled off a slider in the lower half of the zone. Then, rather than reaching for his curveball or going back to the splitter, Yamamoto, bafflingly, threw a four-seamer belt high on the inner half. Over the course of the plate appearance, Soto compelled Yamamoto to give him the exact pitch he wanted and then banished it beyond the fence in right field.
Soto’s swing tied the game, but it bore no lingering effects on Yamamoto’s outing. Beginning with an Aaron Judge fly out to end the third, Yamamoto retired the final 11 batters he faced, and his offense ensured the game didn’t stay tied for long.
In a series underscored by an east coast versus west coast rivalry — a battle with two distinct, yet in many ways similar, identities facing off against one another — it’s fitting that the two starting pitchers in this matchup brought their own similar, yet distinct styles to the mound.
Like Yamamoto, Rodón throws his four-seam fastball just under half the time. He supplements his heater with four other offerings; he swaps a splitter for a changeup, but his three other pitches (cutter, slider, curveball) are also in Yamamoto’s arsenal. (Yamamoto also throws a sinker, giving him a total of six pitches compared to Rodón’s five.) But how Rodón deploys his arsenal is quite different. First, he has more pronounced usage splits depending on batter handedness. In Game 2, he reserved his slider almost exclusively for lefties, and saved his changeup and curveball for righties. Rodón also sequences his pitches in a much more conventional manner. He throws a ton of 0-0 fastballs. Then, if he gets ahead, expect to see the breaking pitches; behind in the count, get ready for more four-seamers. His fastball grades out much better than Yamamoto’s in terms of Stuff+ (114 compared to Yamamoto’s 84), so he’s more comfortable trusting it in counts when the hitter is more likely to be looking for it. In fact, all of his pitches boast above average stuff, so he relies more on that rather than ginning up deception via tunneling and shuffling sequences and locations.
Due to Rodón’s predictable nature, the Dodgers entered the game with a very clear game plan: swing early. Knowing Rodón was likely to start them with fastballs, 12 of the 16 batters he faced swung at either the first or second pitch of the plate appearance. The approach led to a lot of hard contact, with 10 batted balls hit at exit velocities over 95 mph. In the first inning, the top of the Dodgers lineup hit three balls hard, though only a 91-mph liner off the bat of Mookie Betts fell for a hit. But in the bottom of the second, NLCS MVP Tommy Edman got ahead in the count, which earned him a fastball on the inner half — right where he likes ’em — and sent a souvenir to the fans in left field. Rodón gave up another screamer to Enrique Hernández in the following at-bat, but it landed in the glove of Jazz Chisholm Jr. before Rodón made it through the rest of the inning unscathed.
The third inning, however, would find Rodón very much scathed. With two outs, Betts hit another relatively soft single; then Rodón started Teoscar Hernández with back-to-back fastballs. The second one crossed the plate in the red zone of the Hernández heatmap that comes standard in advance scouting reports these days. A predictable pitch in a bad location landed in the seats.
The very next batter was the author of Game 1’s walk-off grand slam: Freddie Freeman. You already know the outcome here. Of the three home runs hit by the Dodgers in Game 2, Freeman’s was the least impactful on the macro game level, but the micro narrative of the plate appearance was Soto-esque.
By this point, Rodón had started losing confidence in his fastball, so he threw Freeman a first-pitch slider for a called strike. He followed that up with a high cutter for a ball before finally giving Freeman the four-seamer, which he fouled off. Ahead in the count, Rodón could more comfortably rely on his slider. During the postgame show, Freeman described his thought process as he worked through the next three pitches. Rodón did go to the slider, which Freeman took for a ball down and away. But Freeman noted that his body language as he took the pitch probably gave away a temptation to swing, so he expected Rodón to test him again with the same pitch. Freeman was correct, and this time he made a point to make the take look more comfortable to dissuade Rodón from going back to that well for a third time. Freeman then explained that he anticipated Rodón would try to change his eye level by coming up and in. The next pitch was a four-seamer in the exact lane Freeman expected. He launched it 401 feet.
The Dodgers maintained their 4-1 lead until the top of the ninth inning, when Blake Treinen took the mound to close things out. Treinen threw six scoreless innings to start the postseason, but including Game 2, he has now allowed a run in each of his last three outings (four innings). On Saturday night, four of the six batters he faced reached base, and he left the bases loaded for Alex Vesia to get the final out of the game.
When Treinen is pitching well his sweeper looks all but unhittable, yet batters can’t help but swing and miss against it because he locates it in such a way that it still appears competitive. When his command is lacking, hitters can more easily sit on his four-seamer and sinker and take the sweeper for a ball. Though he opened the frame by allowing a single to Soto, Treinen located his sweeper well against the first two batters he faced, with two particularly nasty ones to Judge that started in the zone before veering off the plate away. Judge whiffed at both of them, the first pitch of the at-bat and the final one, to strike out for the third time in the game. The one bad sweeper Treinen threw Judge went to the backstop, allowing Soto to advance to second.
Treinen’s real trouble started against Giancarlo Stanton. As he did with Judge, Treinen tried to get Stanton to chase sweepers low and away, but Stanton didn’t bite and both pitches missed the zone. Behind 2-0 in the count, Treinen threw Stanton a sinker in the zone, and Stanton doinked it off the third base bag for a single.
Chisholm then worked an eight-pitch at-bat. Treinen’s plan of attack was a heavy dose of sweepers that start in Chisholm’s wheelhouse down and in to induce a swing before dipping beneath the approaching bat. And at first, that seemed to be a sound strategy. Chisholm took the first of those pitches for a ball, but then hacked at and missed the second and third ones to fall behind in the count, 1-2. Next, Treinen went with a high heater in the zone; Chisholm took a late cut and fouled it off. The pitch changed Chisholm’s eye level, so Treinen went back to the sweeper low and in, but it was too low and too in for Chisholm to swing. The sixth pitch of the at-bat was another down-and-in sweeper. Chisholm swung and barely got a piece of it for a foul ball to stay alive. Treinen tried to blow a fastball by Chisholm, but after missing high for ball three, he decided to take his chances one more time with the sweeper inside. It was another good one that dropped below the zone, but Chisholm was ready for it and lined it to right field for a single. Next, Anthony Rizzo saw six pitches, three of which were well inside and one of which hit him.
Treinen did manage to end his night on a somewhat positive note by getting Anthony Volpe to strike out waving at a few sweepers out of the zone. With two outs and the bases loaded, Vesia came in to face the lefty-hitting catcher Austin Wells, for whom Yankees manager Aaron Boone pinch-hit with Jose Trevino. Vesia’s first pitch was a belt-high fastball that Trevino lifted 345 feet to center field, where it landed in Edman’s glove for the final out.
The Dodgers’ thin starting rotation has forced them to rely heavily on their entire bullpen throughout the postseason. Even one reliever looking shaky could cause a single point of failure in their entire pitching strategy. It’s difficult to know whether Treinen’s rough outing was an off-night or the accumulating evidence of fatigue. Either way, even with a 2-0 series lead, the Dodgers can’t afford too many more nights like that from their closer.
Overall, the Dodgers had a “Good Day,” but if they have to play without Ohtani and their bullpen gets overextended, they may find themselves facing “99 Problems” in the Bronx.
