MILWAUKEE — Yoshinobu Yamamoto wasn’t sure, couldn’t say it, didn’t understand yet.
It must have been a foreign feeling for the Dodgers’ ace, a successful man obsessed with details and generally unaccustomed to failure. Yamamoto was coming off the worst outing of his spectacular and historic career in the playoffs. He played just 2 2/3 innings against the Milwaukee Brewers in Los Angeles’ Game 2 NLCS loss on Monday. It was its shortest start to October ever.
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So Yamamoto sat next to performer Yoshihiro Sonoda atop the post-match podium and tried to answer questions about an afternoon gone wrong. He wore a blue Dodgers hoodie and a puzzled expression.
“I don’t know the exact reason yet,” the 2025 World Series MVP admitted via Sonoda. “I need to watch the videos, and then I can think about what happened today.”
He will have plenty of time to reflect on his journey home on a long, leisurely flight back to Los Angeles. And if the Dodgers don’t win two games this week at Chavez Ravine, Yamamoto could spend all winter dwelling on this one. The prospect of a Game 6 return to American Family Field is no longer a certainty. Because the Los Angeles Dodgers – back-to-back champions and baseball bogeyman – are in shock, losing two games to zero in this best of seven sets.
A dynasty is at stake.
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“Well, we threw three hits tonight…” mused manager Dave Roberts after his team’s discouraging 7-4 loss. “It was part starter, part bullpen. I don’t have an answer as to why.”
This sense of confusion, clearly felt by Roberts, Yamamoto, and other members of DodgerLand, is perfectly reasonable. Not since the 2023 NLDS have the Dodgers lost the first two games of a playoff series. Shohei Ohtani was an Anaheim Angel then. Kyle Tucker was a Houston Astro. Yamamoto was an Orix buffalo. After that shocking 2023 exit to a less talented Arizona Diamondbacks team, the Dodgers shifted the balance of the sport by adding Ohtani and Yamamoto.
Since then, they are 8-0 in the playoffs.
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“It was tough,” Mookie Betts said of Yamamoto’s typically metronomic fall. “But you know, he’s a human being. I think everyone is so used to him being a robot.”
Yamamoto took the mound Monday owning the second-lowest postseason ERA in MLB history among pitchers with at least 10 postseason starts. He left that same hill a little over an hour later, shell-shocked, with just eight outs recorded and three earned runs on his ledger. The setting Wisconsin sun shone through the stadium’s open windows. Many in the crowd, smelling blood and feeling hope, said goodbye to Yamamoto in an ironic tone.
Milwaukee’s offense deserves a lot of credit for crushing Yamamoto. The Brewers lineup made Game 2 a war of attrition from the start. Yamamoto needed 25 pitches to end a tough first inning highlighted by an RBI single from William Contreras. After a faultless second, trouble found Yamamoto in third.
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Extended plate appearances from David Hamilton (six pitches, single), Brice Turang (six pitches, walk) and Contreras (seven pitches, flyout) put Yamamoto on the ropes. Then an epic 12-pitch showdown with Jake Bauers that ended with a bases-loading walk left Yamamoto dry. Christian Yelich delivered the final blow with a single to give Milwaukee a 3-2 lead and end Yamamoto’s night.
There were a few borderline calls along the way that went unchallenged by backstop Will Smith. Maybe a headbutt or two could have stopped the bleeding, but there’s no doubt that Yamamoto looked adrift. He finished the inning having thrown 36 pitches, the most he had thrown in a single frame all year.
“He just didn’t have it tonight, which is very rare,” Roberts said.
But even with Yamamoto beaten and battered, the Dodgers still had a chance to win this game. The Brewers’ unusually sloppy play helped keep the window open. The Los Angeles offense scored its first run without the aid of a hit, added its second on a wayward putout attempt and regained a 4-3 lead in the fifth after Milwaukee starter Logan Henderson threw a sac bunt past a tense Bauers down the left-field line.
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This turned out to be the Dodgers’ last baserunner. Milwaukee regained the lead against reliever Brock Stewart in the sixth, then extended the lead in the eighth. Los Angeles’ collection of stars had no answer to a dialed-in Brewers bullpen that recorded 15 straight outs to end the game.
The Dodgers hitters are a group in dire straits.
“They had much better hitters than us across the board, top to bottom,” Roberts lamented afterward.
Ohtani and Smith continued their unfathomably fruitless postseason, going a combined 0-for-8 in Game 2 to push their combined postseason line to 4-for-43 with zero extra-base hits and 15 strikeouts. Baseball is notoriously random, unpredictable and unforgiving, but this was a cold, shocking streak from two of the game’s most accomplished hitters. Smith hit a few balls well Monday. Ohtani, still physically compromised, did not do so. He struck out twice, including on a freak half-swing in the sixth inning that sent his bat spinning in the air.
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“It’s hard to see, but he’s working and I hope he comes out of this,” Betts said of Ohtani. “We need him, that’s for sure.”
Ohtani, for the sixth straight playoff appearance, was not made available to the media after Game 2. The last time we heard from the four-time MVP was the day of practice before Game 1 of the NLDS.
“(My body) feels really good overall. I feel like my swing is in a better place, smoother and just a few little adjustments here and there,” Ohtani said Oct. 2. He’s 3 for 20 since then.
The mood was predictably gloomy in the Los Angeles clubhouse following the defeat. The players ate dinner, showered, changed into matching dark gray tracksuits and headed to the bus.
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Sonoda, Yamamoto’s interpreter, who had not yet put on his team’s sweatshirt, crossed the room in a slightly more flashy outfit. He wore a navy blue shirt, with a picture of a black pug on a white background just above the word “Bruh.”
Bruh, indeed.
Gn sports
