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Yoshinobu Yamamoto carried a perfect game into the eighth inning and a no-hitter into the ninth against the Chicago White Sox on Saturday night before losing both, per Dodger Blue. The outing came in the second game of the series after the Dodgers were blown out in the opener, and Yamamoto’s gem was enough to tie things up heading into Sunday’s rubber match.

Yamamoto has been everything the Dodgers hoped for — and then some — since arriving from Japan ahead of the 2024 season on his record-setting 12-year, $325 million contract. After a 2024 debut that was interrupted by a rotator cuff strain, Yamamoto came back strong in 2025 and has looked like a legitimate front-of-the-rotation arm. His stuff has always been elite — a fastball-splitter-curveball mix that misses bats at every level — but what separates Yamamoto is his command. Carrying a perfect game that deep into a start is rare for anyone, but it’s the kind of performance that tracks with what we’ve seen from him when he’s locked in. Losing the perfecto in the eighth and the no-hitter in the ninth stings, but the overall body of work on Saturday was spectacular. You don’t flirt with history by accident.

The White Sox have been one of the weaker lineups in baseball, so some context applies here. But you still have to execute pitch after pitch, inning after inning, and Yamamoto did exactly that for the vast majority of the night. The fact that he was deep enough in the game to even have a chance at a no-hitter also speaks to his efficiency — something that hasn’t always been a given with him as he’s adjusted to MLB workloads and the grind of a full American schedule.

For our rotation, this is exactly the kind of start that settles things down. After the blowout loss in the opener and a stretch where the pitching staff has been under the microscope — the bullpen issues in June, the Wrobleski injury scare, everything piling up — Yamamoto stepped up and delivered the kind of outing that reminds you why the front office committed that kind of money. He’s the anchor, and he pitched like it.

The Dodgers now head into Sunday’s rubber match with momentum before returning home to Dodger Stadium for the next series. I’d feel a lot better about where we are right now if the rest of the staff could follow Yamamoto’s lead. He set the standard on Saturday night, even if the final line doesn’t read “no-hitter.” Sometimes the near-miss tells you more about where a pitcher is than the final result. Yamamoto is dealing, and we’re going to need every bit of it as the season rolls forward.

Source(s): Staff (Dodger Blue) | First reported: June 13, 2026 11:03 PM UTC

God Bless and Go Dodgers