What Caused Yamamoto Postseason performance?

While Yoshinobu Yamamoto was regarded as one of the best pitchers on the planet before even taking a pitch in the MLB, and has a proven track record as one of the best NPB pitchers of all time, throwing to a stat line of 75 wins to only 30 losses with a 1.72 era and over a strikeout per nine in almost 1000 innings through 7 seasons. There was speculation of how well it would translate to the MLB after his 325 Million Dollar contract to join the star studded Dodgers team in 2024. To say that the season Yamamoto had in 2024 was a success was an understatement. While only 108.2 innings he threw to a 3.00 era in the regular season and had three good starts to in the postseason to lead the Dodgers to their first championship since the covid year.

Now going into 2025 the dominance that Yamamoto showed in the NPB and WBC wasn't fully matched just yet. While the outings through the year was great and a good postseason with a ring helps, his actions as a main contributor gets overlooked by the MVP Shohei Ohtani and other former mvp Mookie Betts (.290 avg, 4hrs, 16 rbis and 14 runs) and world series MVP Freddie Freeman.(.300 avg, 4 hrs, 12 rbis) Another key contibuter was Tommy Edman who hit 328 with 13 rbis across 16 games in the postseason.

The right hander turned in a season of 12-8 with a 2.49 era in over 170 innings clearly taking the ace role over other star pitches of Tyler Glasnow, former Cy Young Winner and offseason acquisition Blake Snell, and the plethora of other pitching. While everybody now knows how spectacular his post season performance was and especially his championship and world series heroics, a deep dive into the numbers will tell you how impressive it was and why we have not seen a performance like this in nearly a decade from Madison Bumgardner and why we will not see it again for a long time.

To start we can look at how good the competition was for Yamamoto in the postseason with the brewers and the blue jays in particular. The Toronto Blue Jays were one of the top offenses in the league in the regular season leading the league in hits, Avg, and Obp, then had the most amount of hits, runs for any team in the playoffs. As for the brewers they were also a very productive team in the regular season being top 5 in most offensive categories, while their offensive production dwindled in the playoffs their bat to ball skill and high pitches per plate appearance was still high.

While Yamamoto has been dominant throughout his two years since coming stateside , the odds of throwing two complete games against two teams that are high on pitches seen, then coming back to throw 6 innings then another 2.2 the next day is unprecedented. So what needs to happen to have success any close to this, obviously the pure stuff has to be elite which Yamamoto has proven he has, also needs to be in the zone for most of the game, limiting walks and free passes. In the postseason we’ve seen many pitchers like this, including teammate Blake Snell, Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal, Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet, Blue Jays rookie Trey Yesavage, and Yankees rookie Cam Schlittler.

Saying Yamamoto didn’t necessarily have the best start this postseason isn’t far from the truth. Look at Skubal's 7.2 innings, one earned run, 14 strikeouts. Snell faced the minimum through eight in Game 1 of the NLCS. Yesavage went seven innings with 12 Ks in the World Series. Crochet and Schlittler each turned in seven-plus inning outings with 11+ strikeouts.. While these games were dominate in of themselves the one thing that stood Yamamoto out from the rest was his ability to go all 9.

Why was Yamamoto able to go all nine? If simple answer is pure dominance, then why didnt the other pitchers complete games? What factors could explain his ability to go the distance. Strikeouts, simply put the reason that the other pitchers were not able to go the distance was because of a much high pitch per batter faced. In both of Yamamotos complete games he had an average of 3.31 pitchers per plate apperance as we can see from the chart below with the other pitchers.

Pitcher	Innings	Strikeouts	Pitches per PA
Yamamoto (Total Playoffs)	37.1	33	3.65
Yamamoto CG1	9	8	3.46
Yamamoto CG2	9	6	3.28
Cam Schlitter	14.1	14	3.48
Garrett Crochet	7.2	11	4.5
Tarik Skubal	20.2	36	4.04
Blake Snell	34	41	4.13
Trey Yesavage	27.2	39	4.03

As we can see on the graph every pitcher besides Cam Schlitter had a Pitches per PA over 4, because of this the likely hood of them people able to pitch into the 8th or 9th inning without going over 110 plus pitches is very unlikely. The only pitcher to do that was Blake Snell as he faced the minimum through 8.

So how did Yamamoto get outs efficiently without the higher amount of strikeouts? Yamamoto had an 89 percentile strikeout rate throughout the regular season, a 29.4 K% with 201 total ks and 10.42 K/9. In the postseason that K/9 dropped to slightly under 8 with a 7.96 K/9 and a 22.9 K% .

So how did Yamamoto get through the though Blue Jays and the Brewers order to limit pitches and get outs. Him and the Dodgers worked on a usage percentage to change the looks to promote bad swings and weak contact .

For the NLCS he went out the gate throwing most pitches equally with a lean to his fastball. His second and third time through the order we see switches from his splitter to his curve ball as his main choice. The 4th time through going heavy onto the offspeed and breaking pitches and bringing the slider out for the first time all night.

Yamamoto threw 81/111 pitches for strikes for a very high 73 percent. With only 4 total hits in the game. With a total of 24 balls in play 13 not being hard and 11 of those "hard hit" (95 mph or harder) of those 24 only 4 reached base. What we can take from this is Yamamoto attacking the zone to produce swings that do not produce the best contact and the best outcome resulting in keeping his pitch count down and getting outs.

Now going into Game 2

Yamamoto threw a total of 105 pitches with 55 being in the zone and batters swinging at 56 of the 105. This results in a 73 percent strike percentage and total contact on 39 balls. Of those 39 they put 23 in play were 18 went for outs. We can compare this game to Blake Snells Game 1 of the world series.

Blake Snell Game 1

Blake Snell threw a total of 116 pitches in 6.2 innings in game 5. In those he threw a total of 47 balls to get only a 57% strike rate. If he had the strike rate of Yamamoto's 73% he would have thrown over 12 more strikes with his elite stuff could easily get the dodgers another innings.

Does throwing in the zone more often work?

For a pitcher like Yamamoto it clearly did work. He for the zone or got swings on shadow/ chase pitches a good amount of the time, and for other pitchers throughout the year most had success against the Jays when they worked in the zone according to Statcast 2025 expected WOBA. While the Blue Jays stars like Vladimir Guerrero Jr., George Springer and Daulton Varsho crushed pitches in the zone the rest of their team was not the same.

If throwing in the zone worked for most of the year then why didn't it work for most dodgers pitchers?

A mix of their high contact rates and plate discipline worked up pitch counts against most pitchers, as the average foul ball rate per 100 pitches is around 18 and they hit over 20 against most starts in the playoffs. Yamamoto was also subject to this having 16 foul balls in his start, but induced way more contact and soft contact then other dodgers pitchers.

How did Yamamoto induce soft contact?

Yamamoto induced soft contact from his dispersion of pitches and changing up the different mix per each time through the order as we talk about before, and also had a big velocity difference with his peak at 97.9 all the way down to 74.0 and a large difference in various movements and beak profiles.

Is this strategy sustainable, and should other teams use it?

While you hope that going into a postseason your ace can do even half of what Yamamoto did in this year playoffs you understand that its not the most likely outcome. As we have seen a lot of the top contenders value having the top strikeout guys in the game because when there stuff is on they are going to dominate, like we talked about with the other aces in the league. The only way for this strategy to be successful team would need to get high levels of defensive play that promotes allowing teams to let the ball be hit in play, but they would have to find a way to do this without hurting the offensive side of the ball. Obviously every team would love their aces to become Yamamoto next postseason and deal every outting and give extra rest to your bullpen, the league still at a high level of three true outcomes do not want to risk the amount of balls in play that the dodgers and Yamamoto let themselves have.