The Los Angeles Dodgers, stuck in a May malaise, lost their second series in the span of three last weekend against the New York Mets. Shohei Ohtani provided early fireworks in the rubber match with a leadoff homer, but Los Angeles couldn’t get anything going after that.
Thankfully, the Dodgers should have a good chance of turning it around tonight against the Cleveland Guardians, given that Yoshinobu Yamamoto will crest the hill. The 26-year-old Japanese right-hander was sterling in his last start, taking a no-hitter into the seventh inning, although he didn’t end up with the win because his offense was utterly inept.
The Dodgers are 1.5-run favorites and the total is set for 7.5. 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 (+100)
I’ll admit that I’ve backed Yamamoto to pick up the win twice in his last three starts, both against the Arizona Diamondbacks. In the first, he had a blow-up outing and ended up taking the loss, and last Tuesday, he left with a 1-0 lead that was immediately given up by the bullpen in an eventual 4-3 victory. But the third time has to be a charm, right? One bad pitch against Diamondbacks catcher Gabriel Moreno aside, Yamamoto has shown no signs of being even remotely hittable. His 1.86 ERA ranks second in the NL, and he’s only 5-3 because Los Angeles has given him just 1.6 runs per nine innings of support, less than any other starter in baseball.
The Dodgers’ offense didn’t inspire confidence in last night’s loss, but to be fair, that outing came against Kodai Senga, who’s the only NL pitcher with a better ERA than his countryman. Cleveland starter Gavin Williams is no Senga; he has never recorded a sub-three ERA in his career, has given up multiple runs in all but three of his starts this season, and owns just an 11th-percentile walk rate and an 18th-percentile barrel rate. Plus, this season, the Guardians’ offense has posted the league’s seventh-worst OPS, so even if Williams were to give up two or fewer runs, it’s unlikely that Yamamoto would give up more than one.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto U4.5 Hits Allowed (-130)
While this number would be extraordinarily low for any other pitcher in baseball, Yamamoto leads the Senior Circuit with just 5.4 hits allowed per nine innings, and he has allowed four or fewer hits in three of his last four starts and six of his 10 starts overall. In part, that’s because he’s ranked in the league’s 96th percentile at inducing ground balls, and ground balls are typically more likely to lead to outs than fly balls are, especially given that Los Angeles has been the league’s eighth-best fielding team this season. Yamamoto also ranks in the 64th percentile at inducing chases and the 83rd percentile at missing bats.
This season, Cleveland has had the seventh-lowest batting average, hitting just .236. The Guardians have been especially poor this month, posting the fourth-lowest batting average in the league since the start of May, and they’ve had the second-worst batting average at home across the full season. That’s a rough combination going against arguably the National League’s best pitcher. Plus, since he tossed a season-high 110 pitches last Tuesday and the Dodgers will have a day off on Thursday, Dave Roberts might be ultra-cautious with his star tonight and pull him after five or six innings.
