The Los Angeles Dodgers’ long-standing rivalry with the San Francisco Giants got a new participant in Yoshinobu Yamamoto. The $325 million superstar was coming off two amazing performances, but Oracle Park proved to be too much for him. In a topsy-turvy display, Yamamoto was sometimes his extraordinary self, and other times he made mistakes that one doesn’t expect from a player of his caliber. However, while he wasn’t happy with his display, the skipper nonetheless supported him. However, he did take note of Yamamoto’s mistake.

Before this game, Yamamoto was consistently pitching over six innings. The star loves going in deep. However, this time Roberts was forced to call him back after 5 ⅔ innings. The issue? The apparent loss of control that Yamamoto faced in parts occurred during the entire inning. As a result, the superstar ended the game with 4 earned runs off 5 hits and 6 strikeouts. It wasn’t a performance that Yamamoto would like to remember, but Dave Roberts found positives in it.

“I thought the stuff was really good; he pitched well. He made the mistake to the one guy of the first pitch curveball up a three-run homer,” Dave Roberts said in his postgame conference. “Outside of that, he was really good.  I thought the sixth inning the pitch count was where it needed to be. He was primed to get the 7th and then there were a couple of bad walks in there for me.”

Roberts noted that even in the final inning Yamamoto wasn’t pitching badly. It was just that he gave away too many walks and couldn’t escape the jam it caused. So the Dodgers’ skipper is happy despite a below-average performance. However, the same cannot be said about Yamamoto. The Japanese star was visibly upset with the way he pitched last night. More importantly, Yamamoto understood what were the mistakes that he made.

“Not satisfied”: Yoshinobu Yamamoto reviews his performance

“My stuff wasn’t bad, but in the situation I had to hold them to zero,” Yamamoto said in his postgame conference. “My ball was hanging and they took advantage of it.” The Giants’ Luis Matos was the one who punished Yamamoto’s hanging curveball. The star crushed the pitch into the left field to score a 3-run homer in the second inning. One can’t say that it was a surprising development.

Yamamoto threw 11 curveballs in the first two innings. The Giants didn’t swing and miss even once. That led to the star decreasing the use of that pitch as the game went on. The Bay Bombers punished even his slider. That led to Yamamoto limiting the usage of that pitch too.  “That’s something I was not satisfied with,” Yamamoto said about the way he used those pitches. Still, with the Los Angeles Dodgers skipper still believing in him, Yamamoto has little to worry about. The league is still new for him and games like this will regularly come.