Yamamoto’s Latest October Gem Gives Dodgers a 2-1 Lead

Yoshinobu Yamamoto struck out 10 in seven innings Tuesday as the Dodgers beat the Braves 3-1 in Atlanta. The win gave Los Angeles a 2-1 lead in the National League Division Series and put the two-time champions one victory from a third straight NLCS.

It was his first start since he closed Game 7 of last year’s World Series, and it fit the record he has been building since 2024. Kiké Hernández and Freddie Freeman supplied the runs off Chris Sale. Miguel Rojas left holding his back, and Game 4 is still on the board.

Yamamoto Needed Only 98 Pitches

The right-hander from Bizen, Japan, allowed four hits and one walk at Truist Park and needed 98 pitches, 62 of them strikes, to finish seven innings. He retired 12 of the first 14 batters he faced with the splitter working early, then left after a postseason career high in strikeouts.

Dave Roberts, the Dodgers’ manager, had said before the first pitch that he would not overmanage the matchup. “I trust Yamamoto undoubtedly,” Roberts said. “So I’m going to give him every opportunity to do what he does and has done.”

Atlanta loaded the bases with one out in the fifth. Drake Baldwin’s grounder to first scored Mauricio Dubón for the Braves’ only run, and Yamamoto then got Ronald Acuña Jr. to end the inning. Tanner Scott struck out two in a scoreless eighth. Edwin Díaz, earning his first save since mid-August, opened the ninth by giving up a double off the wall to Ozzie Albies, then stranded him at third when Michael Harris II grounded out, Dubón fouled out, and Mike Yastrzemski grounded to Mookie Betts.

Yamamoto, 28, said through interpreter Yoshihiro Sonoda that the feel carried over. “I was able to carry that feel into today’s game,” he said. He also said, “I was confident and able to control all my pitches today,” and that he wants to “continue living up to the highest expectation.”

Before a pitch was thrown, he and Sale tipped caps to each other on the grass.

Yoshinobu masterclass in Game 3. #NLDS pic.twitter.com/efX6OKQjJo

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 7, 2026

The 10 strikeouts were a postseason career high, passing the nine he had in Game 2 of last year’s NL Wild Card Series. It was the 20th double-digit strikeout game in Dodgers postseason history and the first since Shohei Ohtani in Game 4 of the 2025 NLCS. He became the third Japanese-born pitcher to reach 10 strikeouts in a postseason game, joining Ohtani and Hiroki Kuroda, who did it in the 2012 ALCS.

He is also the first Dodger with a postseason start of at least seven innings, 10 strikeouts, and one or fewer runs allowed since Blake Snell in Game 1 of the 2025 NL Wild Card Series. Opta’s pitch tracking, which begins in 1988, had no prior road postseason start of seven innings, 10 strikeouts, no more than one walk, and fewer than 100 pitches.

His October Record Is Now 8-1

The box score was a continuation. Los Angeles has now won 10 of the 11 postseason games Yamamoto has pitched in, and his career October line after 11 career postseason outings is 8-1 with a 2.14 ERA, 58 strikeouts, and a 0.83 WHIP in 63 innings, 10 of them starts.

YAMAMOTO IN OCTOBER

His last five postseason appearances have all come on the road, and he has won all five. The four starts in that group each went at least six innings with exactly one run allowed; the fifth was the eight-out, scoreless relief outing on no rest that finished last year’s World Series. Across those five games he allowed four runs in 33 2/3 innings, with 32 strikeouts and four walks.

That is the pattern the Braves ran into. He went 14-9 with a 2.53 ERA, 185 innings, and 182 strikeouts in the regular season, then stepped back into the version of himself that won World Series MVP in 2025. Albies saw the same thing from the batter’s box.

He was attacking us and putting the ball where he wanted to put it. When you do that, sometimes you’re gonna make the hitters look not good. So, he did so today. I mean, it was really rough.

Ozzie Albies, Braves second baseman

Location, not velocity theater, was the problem for Atlanta. The splitter started the night, and he still had a fastball and breaking ball he could throw for strikes after the bases-loaded fifth. A sold-out crowd of 42,420 did not change the shape of the at-bats.

The Homers Came in the Fourth

Sale, 37, looked like the pitcher who had held the Dodgers to three runs in 16 innings over two regular-season starts. His first six outs were all strikeouts, including Freeman, Will Smith, and Ohtani in the first inning, and he needed 62 pitches to get through three scoreless frames. The Dodgers stranded six runners in those innings, including a bases-loaded third that ended when Miguel Rojas flied to right.

Atlanta had given him extra rest by keeping him off short rest in Game 2 after he threw 6 1/3 innings in Wild Card Game 1 and the last four outs of Wild Card Game 3 against Philadelphia. The rest did not buy a shutdown. Andy Pages led off the fourth with his first hit of the postseason, and Hernández, in his first playoff start, drove a changeup to left for a two-run homer, his 12th postseason home run as a Dodger and the 17th of his playoff career.

One out later Freeman pulled his 18th career postseason homer to right for a 3-0 lead. Dubón had robbed him of a homer in the third with a leaping catch over the left-field wall. Freeman did not mind the boos that followed him around his old park. “I’ve got a gray uniform on,” he said. “I expect boos. It’s OK. … It’s all love. I still love everybody here and I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

Sale lasted five innings, 93 pitches, seven hits, three runs, seven strikeouts, and no walks. Walt Weiss, Atlanta’s manager, said the left-hander was still touching 100 mph. “The stuff was fine. Like I said, maybe the command not perfect. It wasn’t bad. But they did a nice job against him.”

Why Ohtani Hit Fifth Against Sale

Roberts dropped Ohtani to fifth for the first time in three years with the Dodgers, a one-night turn against a left-hander Ohtani had gone 3-for-15 against, including an 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in a 1-0 loss here on August 26. The move also split the left-handed bats of Freeman, Ohtani, and Kyle Tucker.

“I don’t think it’s a pressure thing. I do think it’s something where he wants to do more,” Roberts said Tuesday. “But in that same breath, I do think that there’s going to be a couple big spots today where he’s going to be at-bat.”

Those spots arrived. Sale struck Ohtani out with runners on first and second in the first. In the third, with two on, Ohtani reached on catcher’s interference by Baldwin to load the bases before Rojas flew out. Ohtani walked leading off the eighth against Brent Suter, Atlanta’s fourth pitcher, and was stranded. The fourth-inning homers made the experiment look smarter than the 0-fers did.

Rojas Exits Holding His Lower Back

Rojas started a second straight game against a left-hander and went 0-for-3 with a strikeout. Ken Rosenthal, on the broadcast, said the back first grabbed on the fifth-inning grounder when Rojas fielded Acuña and threw to first to protect the lead. Rojas stayed in through the seventh, then swung in the eighth after Ohtani’s walk, reached for his lower back, and came out mid-at-bat. Tommy Edman popped out and took over at second.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The diagnosis: The Dodgers listed Rojas with low back pain after he left in the eighth.
• The next start: Roberts said Rojas probably will not start in Game 4, with bench availability to be decided before first pitch.
• Rojas’s own read: He said he felt he was the right bat against a lefty in the eighth, tweaked it more on the swing, and wants to be ready when they need him.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Game 4 role: Whether he can pinch-hit or play defense on Wednesday has not been announced.
• Acuña’s knee: Weiss moved Acuña from right field to designated hitter after he jammed the knee sliding in Game 2; Lane Thomas started in right, and Sean Murphy was out of the lineup. How much the knee limits him in Game 4 is still an open question.

Mahle, who will start Game 4 for Atlanta, told reporters an abdominal pull is now a “non-issue” after he felt it before allowing one run in seven innings of a 4-3, 10-inning Wild Card loss to Philadelphia.

A Tie With Tony La Russa

The win was Roberts’s 71st in the postseason, tying Tony La Russa for second all time. Joe Torre is first with 84. Roberts has done all of that work with the Dodgers since 2016. A win on Wednesday would move him alone into second.

He treated Tuesday like a last game anyway. “We played tonight like an elimination game,” Roberts said. In best-of-five series that were tied 1-1, the team that won Game 3 has gone on to win the series 48 of 67 times (72%). In Division Series under the current 2-2-1 format, clubs leading 2-1 heading into Game 4 on the road have won 26 of 37 series (70%), with 20 of those clinching victories coming in Game 4.

That is the bracket math. The larger history is the one Los Angeles is actually chasing. The Dodgers are trying to become the first National League club to win three straight World Series titles, a list that so far belongs only to American League dynasties, which you can read in the ledger of every World Series champion since 1903.

THE FOUR THREE-PEAT CLUBS

• Yankees, 1936-39: Four straight titles, still the second-longest streak on record.
• Yankees, 1949-53: Five straight, the longest championship run in the sport.
• Athletics, 1972-74: The only three-peat that did not wear pinstripes, finished against these same Dodgers in 1974.
• Yankees, 1998-2000: The most recent three-peat, under Torre, the last club to win three in a row.

A fifth three-peat, if it happens, would still have to survive Atlanta on Wednesday, then a championship series, then October’s last round. Game 3 only put them on the step that those earlier clubs also had to take.

Wednesday’s Ball Goes to Glasnow

Tyler Glasnow starts Game 4 on Wednesday at 6 p.m. ET on FS1, FOX Deportes, and FOX One, with Mahle opposite him. Glasnow went 5-2 with a 3.53 ERA and 98 strikeouts in 74 2/3 innings over 14 starts this season. If the series reaches a fifth game, it would be Friday in Los Angeles.

THE SERIES SO FAR

1. October 3: Dodgers take Game 1 at Dodger Stadium behind Tarik Skubal and homers from Teoscar Hernández, Kyle Tucker, and Max Muncy.
2. October 4: Braves even it 1-1, 3-2, after Blake Snell comes out in the fourth.
3. October 6: Yamamoto, Hernández, and Freeman make it 2-1 in Atlanta, 3-1.
4. October 7: Game 4 in Atlanta, Glasnow against Mahle, 6 p.m. ET.

Los Angeles still has to get 27 more outs with a second baseman who probably will not start and a closer who already put the tying run on third once. Atlanta still has Sale’s stuff in the rearview and a lineup that can punish a mistake. Yamamoto will not pitch again in this series unless it goes sideways. The night he just threw is why the Dodgers can even talk about a third straight NLCS in the same breath as clubs that won in 1936, 1949, 1972, and 1998.