Yamamoto outduels deGrom with 10-K scoreless gem

ARLINGTON -- With the way Yoshinobu Yamamoto has looked early on this season, the Dodgers are already envisioning him adding some hardware to a trophy case that's already pretty full.

"There's a lot of time, but I do think that right now, he's the best pitcher in the National League," manager Dave Roberts said. "Now, [Paul] Skenes is pretty good, too, so no disrespect."

Roberts believes that Yamamoto could make a serious run at the NL Cy Young Award in his second season in the Majors -- and the 26-year-old right-hander certainly looked the part while opposing someone who knows a thing or two about winning the honor.

Yamamoto lowered his ERA to an NL-best 0.93 and outdueled Jacob deGrom in a showdown of highly decorated arms as the Dodgers edged out the Rangers, 3-0, in Friday night's series opener at Globe Life Field.

Between the two, they've won the top pitching honor in their respective league five times -- deGrom has two Cy Young Awards and Yamamoto has three Eiji Sawamura Awards. It was a must-see matchup, and neither side disappointed.

“Terrific job by Jacob,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. "He had really good stuff tonight, good location. He did a really, really nice job. Their guy was tough on us. He got us to expand with two strikes quite a bit all night. That's unlike us. We did some chasing there. I thought this would be a low-scoring game. That's what it was.”

The Dodgers gave Yamamoto the edge before he even threw a pitch, with Tommy Edman doing his best Shohei Ohtani impression from the leadoff spot while the Japanese superstar is away from the team as he and his wife await the birth of their first child. Edman took deGrom deep for his seventh homer of the season, which is tied for the National League lead.

From there, Yamamoto was in the driver's seat. He twirled seven scoreless innings, matching his MLB career high with 10 strikeouts and holding the Rangers to five hits and zero walks. He generated 20 whiffs, the most in a single game in his big league career.

After giving up the leadoff blast to Edman, deGrom locked back in. He struck out seven Dodgers hitters across seven innings, holding them to three hits and one walk.

"I definitely feel joy to compete against a pitcher like deGrom," Yamamoto said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda. "Today, I knew it was going to be a tight game. He was good. So I was being a little more careful to not make a mistake."

Seeing Yamamoto go toe-to-toe with deGrom, who had been widely considered one of the best pitchers in baseball before losing much of the past two seasons to injuries, opened some eyes as to just how good the Japanese right-hander has been lately.

Then again, Yamamoto was one of the best pitchers in Nippon Professional Baseball before signing with the Dodgers ahead of the 2024 season, so perhaps it should come as no surprise that he's hitting his stride in the Majors.

"He's been a man on a mission," Edman said. "He's pretty much unstoppable. It's fun playing behind him. You pretty much know what you're gonna get every time. Seven shutout innings today against a good lineup. They got a lot of really talented players, a lot of good hitters in that lineup. To make them look the way that he did was pretty incredible."

Yamamoto was great, but not mind-blowingly so, as a big league rookie. His signature start came last June 7 against the Yankees, when he blanked New York over seven innings in the Bronx for the longest scoreless outing of his Major League career -- a feat that he did not match until Friday.

That gave the Dodgers their first up-close look at Yamamoto, the big-game pitcher. He continued to blossom during Los Angeles' championship run, brushing off a shaky postseason debut to put together some gutsy performances en route to the World Series title.

That momentum followed Yamamoto to the new season. His electric stuff, by all accounts, is the same. But his confidence has only grown.

“I think there's no more unknown," Roberts said. "Being here in the States, understanding how his stuff plays against Major League hitters, the surroundings, his environment. And then with all that, the confidence, it's real.

"I just think that he's just got so much conviction with every pitch, every throw that he makes, and there's just no more doubt.”