PHOENIX — Talking about the start of a four-game series against the NL West rival Arizona Diamondbacks on Thursday afternoon, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts made this observation.
“We’ve seemed to bring out the best in them.”
And the Diamondbacks brought out the worst in Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
An early (very early) Cy Young Award frontrunner, Yamamoto gave up a grand slam to Gabriel Moreno and a solo home run to Ketel Marte as the Diamondbacks beat the Dodgers, 5-3, on Thursday night at Chase Field.
Yamamoto came into the game off his best start of the season – one hit in six scoreless innings at Atlanta last week. But he was pitching on five days of rest for the first time this season after being on a one-start-per-week schedule through the first six weeks of the season.
Yamamoto’s command was off along with his calendar. He gave up three hits in the first three innings then walked Pavin Smith to start the fourth.
Josh Naylor hit a ground ball up the middle that Mookie Betts made an outstanding play to get to – but his attempt to flip the ball to Hyeseong Kim for a force at second base went badly. When Yamamoto hit Eugenio Suarez with an 0-and-2 slider, the bases were loaded with no outs.
Moreno emptied them when Yamamoto left a 2-and-0 cutter over the heart of the plate. The opposite-field grand slam was Moreno’s first home run of the season.
Marte played just his 14th game of the season Thursday night due to a hamstring injury. So he hadn’t hit a home run either – until he lined another Yamamoto cutter into the seats for a solo home run in the fifth inning.
Yamamoto’s worst start of the season lasted just five innings. The five runs he allowed doubled his ERA in an evening, from 0.90 to 1.80. The six hits he allowed are a season-high.
Diamondbacks starter Brandon Pfaadt, meanwhile, kept the Dodgers’ offense thin.
He allowed just four hits while taking a shutout into the seventh inning.
The Dodgers put runners at the corners with two outs in the first inning but Will Smith grounded out to end the inning. They did the same thing in the sixth but Pfaadt struck out Andy Pages.
They finally broke through in the eighth inning against Diamondbacks reliever Juan Morillo. Singles Mookie Betts and Smith set up an RBI double by Max Muncy and an RBI single by Pages. But Marte started a nifty double play on Michael Conforto’s ground ball to end the inning.
Ohtani tightened things up with a solo home run in the ninth before Kevin Ginkel closed it out for the Diamondbacks.
More to come on this story.
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