Yamamoto Returns to Milwaukee as the Dodgers Stopper

Yoshinobu Yamamoto starts NLCS Game 2 for the Dodgers on Monday in Milwaukee, a year after he threw a complete game on the same mound.

Los Angeles fell 2-1 on Sunday at American Family Field, stranded nine runners, and now turns to the pitcher who last answered a series hole with nine innings.

Milwaukee Gets Yamamoto Again on Monday

First pitch is 5 p.m. ET on FOX and FS1, with the Brewers up 1-0 in a rematch of last year’s National League Championship Series. Manager Dave Roberts named Yamamoto for Game 2 so the right-hander could work on his usual five days of rest and stay lined up for a possible Game 6 on Oct. 18.

The club posted the assignment after the NLDS:

Yoshinobu Yamamoto for Game 2 of the NLCS. pic.twitter.com/1mXJxtCpv5

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 9, 2026

Freddie Freeman, the Dodgers first baseman, treated Sunday as one night in a long series. “Any loss in the playoffs is not great, but it’s a long series,” Freeman said. “It’s just the first game. Come back out tomorrow with Yamamoto and feel pretty confident.”

That confidence is the easy part of the night. Yamamoto has not started on fewer than five days’ rest in a Dodgers uniform, aside from last year’s World Series Game 7, when he closed the clincher on no rest and took MVP honors. The harder part is scoring behind him. Mookie Betts flew out to center with two runners on to end Game 1 and put the burden back on the lineup.

The Complete Game Milwaukee Has Not Forgotten

On Oct. 14, 2025, Yamamoto walked into this park after a Game 1 loss in a different round and refused to leave. Jackson Chourio hit his first pitch for a home run. He then needed 111 pitches to finish a 5-1 win, allowing three hits and one walk with seven strikeouts, and he retired his last 14 batters. It was the first complete game of his major league career, the first Dodgers postseason complete game since José Lima in the 2004 NLDS, and the first in the majors’ postseason since Justin Verlander in the 2017 ALCS.

Eleven days later he did it again, this time in World Series Game 2 against the Toronto Blue Jays, another 5-1 final. He retired his last 20 batters, allowed four hits and one earned run with eight strikeouts on 105 pitches, and became the first pitcher with consecutive complete games since Curt Schilling stacked three in 2001. Orel Hershiser had been the last Dodger to string complete games in October, in 1988. Both of Yamamoto’s nine-inning nights came on the road.

YAMAMOTO’S OCTOBER NIGHTS

1. Oct. 14, 2025: Throws a three-hit complete game in NLCS Game 2 at American Family Field, a 5-1 win, and retires his last 14 batters.
2. Oct. 25, 2025: Goes nine again in World Series Game 2, retires his last 20, and ties that series at 1-1.
3. Oct. 6, 2026: Beats Atlanta in NLDS Game 3 with seven innings, one run, and 10 strikeouts on 98 pitches.
4. Oct. 12, 2026: Starts NLCS Game 2 in Milwaukee on five days’ rest, with Los Angeles already down a game.

He had 16 complete games over seven seasons in Japan, including two in the postseason. The two he threw in the majors were his first two in this league, a path last walked by Josh Beckett in 2003. Asked to explain the October run, Yamamoto said through an interpreter, “Just completely to be honest with you, I’m not sure. I just do the same routine, and I haven’t really changed much.”

Hershiser, Schilling and Nine Full Innings

Complete games have all but left October. Before Yamamoto’s pair, the World Series had not seen one since Johnny Cueto in 2015, and no pitcher had thrown more than one in a single postseason since Madison Bumgarner in 2014. Hershiser’s 1988 run, three straight complete games, and Schilling’s three in 2001 are the club Yamamoto joined, a list that also runs through Sandy Koufax in 1963 and 1965.

The regular-season version of this pitcher in 2026 was 14-9 with a 2.53 ERA, 182 strikeouts, and a 0.87 WHIP over 185 innings in 28 starts, plus one complete game. He is 28, listed at 5-foot-10 and 176 pounds, and signed through 2035 on a 12-year, $325 million contract. That is not why Roberts trusts him on Monday. The postseason ledger is.

Baseball-Reference carries him at 8-1 with a 2.14 ERA in 11 postseason appearances, 10 of them starts, across 63 innings with 58 strikeouts and 13 walks. Among pitchers with at least 10 postseason starts, his start-only rates sit in rare air.

YAMAMOTO AMONG PITCHERS WITH 10 POSTSEASON STARTS

The Dodgers are undefeated in his six road postseason starts. Only three of those 10 starts have come after a loss, and he has a 1.23 ERA in those games. Last year he evened a World Series that opened with a defeat. The pattern the club is betting on is the same one Hershiser and Schilling used: hand the ball to the stopper the night after a loss and let him finish.

Why the Dodgers Still Need Hits Behind Him

Sunday’s 2-1 loss was not a starter failure. Tarik Skubal, the two-time American League Cy Young winner acquired from Detroit on Aug. 2, struck out six of the first nine hitters he faced, then lost a 2-0 count to Brice Turang in the fourth. Turang hit a tying home run into the home bullpen, his second career postseason homer. In the fifth, Garrett Mitchell walked, Cooper Pratt bunted him to second, and Luis Lara, a 21-year-old rookie, singled up the middle for the go-ahead run.

Skubal went five innings, five hits, two earned runs, two walks, and seven strikeouts on 81 pitches, the first time in eight career playoff starts he failed to finish six. Jacob Misiorowski, Milwaukee’s ace and the likely National League Cy Young winner, lasted only 4 1/3 innings and one run on five hits and three walks. Four Brewers relievers, DL Hall, Abner Uribe, Aaron Ashby, and Trevor Megill, threw 4 2/3 scoreless innings. Milwaukee turned three double plays.

Los Angeles went 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position and left nine on. That followed a 1-for-16 mark in the NLDS, a combined 2-for-22 this postseason with runners in scoring position.

THE CHANCES THAT DIED IN GAME 1

• Second inning: Bases loaded, one out, already up 1-0, Kiké Hernández grounds into an inning-ending double play.
• Third and fourth: Leadoff singles in both innings, and neither runner scores.
• Sixth inning: Runners on first and third, Andy Pages strikes out to end the threat.
• Ninth inning: Kyle Tucker and Josue De Paula draw two-out walks, and Betts flies out to center to end it.

Shohei Ohtani opened the second with a four-pitch walk and scored on Pages’ single, then added a flare single later. He has no extra-base hit in five postseason games and has not homered since Aug. 18. Over 23 games since that date he is hitting.163 (14-for-86) with a.503 OPS and one RBI. He will not pitch in this NLCS while he deals with nagging injuries. A year ago in Game 4 of this same series he went 3-for-3 with three home runs and struck out 10 over six scoreless innings. That version has not arrived.

Betts put the night on the bats. “It’s the same as Skubal, same as Scoob,” he said. “Obviously, it does matter what they do, but the offense has to figure out a way to get some more timely hits. But we do need to keep applying pressure like we’ve been doing. But we’ve got to figure out how to break through.”

The Rookie Who Has Already Handled This Lineup

Logan Henderson, 24, makes his second career postseason start. The Brewers’ official line on him is 11-3 with a 2.47 ERA, 110 strikeouts, and a 0.84 WHIP in 98 1/3 innings over 18 starts. In Game 2 of the NLDS against San Diego he threw five innings and allowed two runs, one earned, with four strikeouts.

He has already seen these hitters. In two regular-season starts against Los Angeles he went 2-0 with 12 innings, one earned run, and 13 strikeouts, a 0.75 ERA. Roberts called him a really good young pitcher who had his way with the Dodgers at their place, and maybe in Milwaukee as well. The louder problem on Monday is not whether Yamamoto can miss bats. It is whether a club that is 2-for-22 with runners in scoring position can break a pitcher who has already walked through this order twice.

Milwaukee is a different October opponent than the one the Dodgers swept a year ago. The 103-59 Brewers won the majors’ best record by playing this exact game, small ball plus a deep bullpen, and they had dropped seven straight postseason games to Los Angeles, including four last October in which they scored one run apiece, before Sunday. The 100-62 Dodgers are trying to become the first club to win three straight titles since the Yankees from 1998 to 2000. This is the first NLCS between 100-win teams since Cincinnati beat Philadelphia in 1976.

A 1-0 Hole Survives in Only a Third of These Series

History is cold on Sunday night. Teams that fall behind 1-0 in best-of-seven postseason series have come back to win 70 of 197 times, 36 percent. In the current 2-3-2 format, clubs that lose Game 1 on the road have gone on to win 34 of 103 times, 33 percent. Only one of those clubs handed the ball to Yamamoto, and that club won.

THE HOLE AFTER GAME 1

• Best-of-seven, down 1-0: 70 wins in 197 series, 36 percent.
• 2-3-2 format, lost Game 1 on the road: 34 wins in 103 series, 33 percent.
• This series: two games in Milwaukee, then three in Los Angeles, then two back here if needed.
• The rotation behind him: Skubal already used, Blake Snell likely for Game 3, Tyler Glasnow the probable Game 4 option.

A Yamamoto win on Monday only ties the series and sends it to Dodger Stadium even. It does not repair the 2-for-22. It does not make Ohtani’s extra-base drought disappear. It does not turn Henderson into a soft matchup. The split is the whole job, and it still leaves a 103-win club with home-field chances later in the week.

Roberts Will Hand Him the Ball Anyway

Roberts did not dress it up. “We feel good with our guy, feel good about the ability to prevent runs,” he said. “You can’t go into a long series against a team that has the best record in baseball and expect to just win four. It’s going to be a long series. We knew it coming in. We had our chances, but they made plays, pitches when they needed to. We’ve just got to reset. We’ve got our guy going tomorrow, who we trust undoubtedly, and we’ve got to win a baseball game.”

We’ve got our guy going tomorrow, who we trust undoubtedly, and we’ve got to win a baseball game.

Dave Roberts, Dodgers manager, after NLCS Game 1

Yamamoto faces Milwaukee for a third time this year after 13 regular-season innings, two earned runs, and 12 strikeouts against them. He is the fourth ace in a rotation that also holds Skubal, Snell, and Glasnow, and he is the one they keep for the night after a loss. Last October on this mound, losing was not an option, and he threw until there were no outs left. Monday he gets the baseball again at 5 p.m. ET, with the same park, a thinner lineup, and a 1-0 hole that most clubs never climb out of.