Yoshinobu Yamamoto Has a Secret Weapon

LOS ANGELES — Yoshinobu Yamamoto was in a bit of a pickle. In the first inning of his first-ever World Series start on Saturday night, the adrenaline was (understandably) pumping; the normally controlled right-hander sprayed fastballs around the zone to hand Gleyber Torres, the Yankees leadoff hitter, a base on balls. Following a Juan Soto groundout pushed Torres to second, Yamamoto fell behind Aaron Judge 2-1 after missing with a couple of fastballs.

He’d shown Judge the slow curveball on 1-0, so he probably didn’t want to show it again. But he also did not want to fall behind 3-1 to this generation’s Barry Bonds with a runner on second and Giancarlo Stanton looming on deck. It was time to break out the secret weapon.

In a sense, Yamamoto hardly needed his slider to dominate the Yankees in Game 2 of the World Series, which the Dodgers won, 4-2, to take 2-0 series lead. He threw only six sliders on Saturday night, throwing them less frequently than his fastball, curveball, and splitter. (Baseball Savant says Yamamoto threw eight sliders, but I proclaim that two of them were misclassified cutters.)

But the total number of sliders thrown belies their importance. Every single slider was thrown in a huge spot, like in this 2-1 count to Judge early in the contest. Each time the game could have easily slipped away with one missed location, one poor pitch selection, Yamamoto opted for the slider, shielding it from his opponents until it was absolutely necessary.

Such a strategy is a fascinating counter to the “stuffplusification” of pitch usage over the last few years. Many coaches, analysts, and pitchers have embraced the idea that a great pitch ought to be thrown as much as possible. This philosophy powered the miraculous late career run of Rich Hill; it continues to define the careers of dozens of hurlers across the league. (Yankees relievers Jake Cousins and Tommy Kahnle come to mind.) It’s a tough principle to argue with; throw your best stuff as much as possible is as self-evident as it gets.

But a pitcher with the talent of Yamamoto — capable of painting flat-angle high-velocity fastballs, firing knee-buckling 91-mph splitters, and looping two-plane curveballs for stolen strokes — has the luxury of keeping a trick up his sleeve for sticky situations.

The slider wasn’t even part of his initial major league repertoire. Here is Yamamoto’s pitch plot through his first month — he had the cutter and the curve, but nothing hard and depth-y that moved to the glove side:

In early May, Yamamoto broke it out for the first time. As Lance Brozdowski noted at the time, Yamamoto’s initial feel for his slider wasn’t great; all but one of them were non-competitive misses. But the movement metrics on the pitch were excellent: It was getting negative two inches of induced vertical break with six inches of sweep at 86 mph and grading out as a 139 in Stuff+.

After throwing the pitch just 3% of the time in the regular season, Yamamoto ramped up the usage in October. In his first playoff start, a rocky three-inning affair in the NLDS, he set his season-high for game-level usage of the slider, throwing it 10% of the time. He set that record again in his NLCS start against the Mets; at 19.2% usage, it was his most-used pitch after the fastball. Of the 14 sliders, the Mets whiffed on five, five were fouled off, and none were put in play.

Given the upward trend line on the pitch’s usage and its success in the highest-stakes start of his big league career to that point, it figured that Yamamoto would keep the sliders coming to neutralize the powerful Yankees lineup. But three interesting things happened instead: 1) The pitch moved more than it had all season. 2) He used it less frequently than all of his other pitches. 3) He used it only in crucial situations against the Yankees’ best hitters.

Let’s return to that Judge at-bat in the first. After evening the count at 2-2 on that first slider of the game, he tried to get Judge to chase a curveball out of the zone. No dice: Judge flinched but did not offer. His curveball is a called-strike and foul-ball machine, but doesn’t really work as a late-count whiff pitch — Judge was not at risk of confusing the curve with the fastball.

With the count 3-2, a runner on second, and his back against the wall, Yamamoto went back to the slider. Judge lunged awkwardly at the pitch, nicking a piece of the ball to stay alive. Yamamoto must have liked what he saw because on his second full-count offering, he doubled up, throwing an absolute beauty to punch out Judge:

This pitch traveled at 85 mph with 11 inches of glove side movement and negative five (!!!) inches of induced vertical break. Only one slider Yamamoto threw this season had that much combined depth and sweep, and it came in his NLCS start on an 0-2 offering to J.D. Martinez, who looked bamboozled after swinging and missing.

So, Yamamoto is getting the slider to move more than ever. But even at the peak of its powers, he uses it selectively, leaning on the splitter as his primary late-count out pitch. In addition to the three sliders in that first Judge encounter, he threw three others on Saturday night.

Top of the 3rd, 2-2 count to Juan Soto:

After missing with a first-pitch fastball, Yamamoto snuck ahead 1-2 on Soto with three straight splitters. Soto took the first one for a strike, whiffed on the second, and comfortably watched the third sail outside. After watching Soto proceed to shuffle all over his ass, Yamamoto was not about to quadruple up. But what other option did he have?

High fastball? Not wise. Soto’s raison d’etre is pouncing on poorly considered high fastballs. The curve, as we covered, is not a chase pitch. So at 2-2, Yamamoto did something he rarely does: He threw a slider to a left-handed hitter. It hung up in the zone, but Soto was way early on it, fouling it off to the first base side. Soto stared him down, as if to say, “I know you’re not going to try that again.”

Yamamoto did not try it again. Next pitch, he tried to paint a fastball for a called strike on the low-outside corner. He, uh, missed his spot; Soto nuked it, and Yamamoto had allowed his only hit across his 6 1/3 innings of work.

Top of the 3rd, 1-2 count to Aaron Judge:

After working into a favorable count with a curve and two heaters, Yamamoto went to the slider for the attempted strikeout. From a stuff perspective, it was another incredible pitch — 86 mph, -5” induced vertical break, 10” horizontal break. But Judge had seen three in the previous at-bat; he spotted it out of the hand and took it easily for ball two. (Yamamoto jammed him with a fastball on the next pitch.)

Top of the 7th, 1-1 count to Giancarlo Stanton:

This one was an oopsie. Yamamoto was facing the fearsome Stanton for the third time in the game; in their first two encounters, Stanton had only seen four-seam fastballs. On 1-1, Yamamoto threw a slider to gain that precious count leverage. It backed up on him, a cement mixer, floating dangerously into the middle of the zone. Stanton obliterated it 118 mph — but it went just foul.

After inducing a popup on a splitter two pitches later, Yamamoto’s day was done.

While the quality of the execution varied, the philosophy was clear. In high-leverage spots to the scariest hitters, Yamamoto unleashed the slider. By saving the pitch for when it was most needed, he maximized its effectiveness and limited its decay. With the fastball, splitter, and curve more than capable of retiring most hitters, Yamamoto was content on Saturday to save the ever-improving slider as an emergency hammer.

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