On the bright side, Yoshinobu Yamamoto set a really low bar to clear in his next start.
Following a historically terrible Dodgers debut Thursday in a 15-11 loss to the Padres, Yamamoto is confident he will be better next time out.
“I wasn’t able to execute a pitch from the stretch,” Yamamoto said after allowing five runs in just one inning, according to MLB.com. “I know how to fix it, and I’m going to talk to my pitching coaches Mark [Prior] and Connor [McGuiness] and fix it for my next outing.”
Yamamoto, the highest-paid pitcher in MLB history, entered the record books for all the wrong reasons Thursday when he recorded just three outs and suffered the loss.
He yielded four hits and walked one batter while striking out two in a 43-pitch effort.
Yamamoto’s outing marked the shortest by a Dodgers starter in a debut since 1958, and he is the first debuting Dodgers starter since 1901 to allow at least five runs in no more than one inning, per MLB.com.
That the righty attributed his issues to pitching out of the stretch seemingly makes sense since he faced just one batter without a runner on base.
The first four batters reached base against Yamamoto before he induced a sacrifice fly that gave the Padres a 3-0 advantage.
This disastrous outing comes after Yamamoto posted an 8.38 ERA in spring training.
“I feel regret that I just couldn’t keep the team in the game from the get-go,” Yamamoto told reporters. “So I do feel a responsibility for it. Like I said, I just have to get ready for the next outing.”
Yamamoto’s next start should come during the Dodgers’ upcoming seven-game homestand against the Cardinals and Giants beginning March 28.
“I mean, I’ve definitely seen sharper from him,” said Dodgers catcher Will Smith, per MLB.com. “I thought he competed. It was his debut. Obviously would have liked it to have been a little better. But we’ll learn, we’ll keep going and I expect a lot from him this year.”
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