The Los Angeles Dodgers have floundered lately, shockingly getting swept by the somewhat hapless Los Angeles Angels during the MLB’s inaugural Rivalry Weekend and then dropping the opening game of the series to the Arizona Diamondbacks last night. Even with the four-game losing streak, the Dodgers still lead the NL West by half a game.
If Los Angeles wants to get back on track today, it has the right man on the mound: Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Japan’s most highly-touted pitching prospect ever has lived up to his lofty expectations, as he sports just a 2.12 ERA through 51.0 innings and has among the shortest odds to win the NL Cy Young Award at DraftKings Sportsbook.
The Dodgers are 1.5-run favorites and the total is set for 9.5. Below, I’ve highlighted my favorite prop bets centered around Yamamoto.
Best Yoshinobu Yamamoto Prop Bets on DraftKings Sportsbook
Yoshinobu Yamamoto to Record a Win (+115)
Given his 2.12 ERA and the high-powered Los Angeles offense, it’s kind of surprising that Yamamoto only sports a 5-3 record. It’s not entirely his fault — in one of his losses, he gave up one run (zero earned), and in another, three runs (one earned). Each of those performances should’ve been good enough to at least avoid the loss, but the Dodgers have given him only 1.6 runs per nine innings of support with him on the mound, 0.3 runs worse than the next-worst pitcher. Los Angeles should certainly be better tonight against converted reliever Ryne Nelson and his 5.13 ERA, especially now that Teoscar Hernández is back from his adductor injury and Hyeseong Kim and Dalton Rushing are in the majors raking. The Dodgers’ hitting hasn’t been an issue in their mediocre May; they’ve posted the league’s best OPS and scored its second-most runs.
Yamamoto’s most recent loss did come against the Diamondbacks, when he gave up a fourth-inning grand slam to Gabriel Moreno in a 5-3 defeat on May 8, but Nelson should be an easier pitcher to out-duel than Brandon Pfaadt, who sports a solid 7-3 record so far this season. Most of Yamamoto’s pitches in that game were fine, but he simply threw two bad cutters and Arizona took advantage of both. Besides that, the expected .244 wOBA he posted on his fastball and the .164 expected wOBA on his signature splitter were slightly better than his season averages. Over his last two mediocre starts, his velocity and spin rates have been fairly normal, so Los Angeles fans shouldn’t be overly concerned.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto O17.5 Outs Recorded (-130)
The Dodgers’ bullpen has been stretched fairly thin in recent games; none of the three pitchers yesterday lasted more than five innings, Tony Gonsolin threw just four innings on Sunday, Clayton Kershaw hurled only four in his rough season debut on Saturday, and Dustin May lasted only five on Friday. Although the plan entering the season had been for Yamamoto to pitch only once a week after he missed nearly three months during his rookie season because of a shoulder issue, Los Angeles has had to speed up that timeline and allow him to pitch every six days because of its mediocre pitching depth. With Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki both on the injured list, the Dodgers absolutely need Yamamoto to go six innings tonight.
Thankfully, he did last six innings last Wednesday against the Athletics, giving up four hits and three runs and recording the win. He has thrown the league’s ninth-most pitches per plate appearance, but that’s in part because he’s been so good at inducing whiffs that at-bats tend to drag on, but because he leads the Senior Circuit in hits allowed per nine innings, he’s mostly breezed through innings fairly quickly, getting through six or more innings in five of his nine starts despite only throwing more than 91 pitches thrice. The Diamondbacks make contact at the league’s highest rate and puts it into play at the eighth-highest rate, so as long as his teammates can convert the outs, he should go deep into the game.
