PHOENIX — Yoshinobu Yamamoto would probably like to forget his one-inning MLB debut. If he could get MLB to agree, his ERA would be 1.64 and his WHIP 0.97 over six Seoul-less starts.
The Dodgers scored five times in the second inning and coasted to an 8-0 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks with Yamamoto turning in his second consecutive scoreless start.
As The Bee Guy’s 15 minutes of fame wound down, the Dodgers won their third series on the three-city, two-country, 5,425-mile cavalcade.
“Everybody just expects us to dominate, dominate, dominate,” Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes said of the swing from a 3-6 homestand to a 7-2 road trip. “Baseball’s hard. It’s a tough game. I feel like we came on the road and played some good baseball together and hopefully we’ll just keep carrying on.”
The Dodgers did come pretty close to “dominate, dominate, dominate” on this trip. They outscored their three opponents (the Washington Nationals, Toronto Blue Jays and Diamondbacks) 45-19 and trailed at the end of a total of just 15 of the 82 innings played.
“You look back 11 days ago and we were in a tough spot, weren’t playing good baseball,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “To go on the road, East Coast trip, to go north of the border and then come back here and play a division rival and end up 7-2, it was a nice feat, a lot of good baseball.
“Offensively, I thought outside of last night (a 4-3 loss in extra innings) we were really good the entire road trip and then the pitching, the defense, has been the best we’ve had all year.”
Yamamoto neutralized the Diamondbacks as effectively as The Bee Guy’s “non-pesticidal solution” knocked out Tuesday’s bee swarm. The Japanese right-hander allowed five hits and walked two in six scoreless innings and now has a 15-inning scoreless streak.
The Diamondbacks only got two baserunners to second base against Yamamoto – one in the first inning then later in the sixth. Both were stranded there.
“I…
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