Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto lost a no-hitter with two outs in the ninth inning.
The Dodgers’ bullpen then surrendered the lead, resulting in a 4-3 walk-off victory for the Orioles.
The loss marked the Dodgers’ fifth consecutive defeat and came on a night honoring Cal Ripken Jr.
One minute, ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto was an out away from throwing a no-hitter against the Baltimore Orioles – only to yield a two-out home run to Jackson Holliday. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts sauntered to the mound and, before lifting Yamamoto, told him to tip his cap to a large throng of visiting Dodgers fans at Camden Yards after throwing 112 mostly devastating pitches at opposing hitters.
The next, top reliever Blake Treinen, entrusted to protect what was still a two-run lead, was spraying the ball almost everywhere but the strike zone, giving up a double, walking a batter, hitting another, walking in a run and handing a now one-run lead to the Dodgers’ embattled $72 million man, Tanner Scott.
Finally, the new low plumbed by the defending World Series champions: A two-run, walk-off single that Emmanuel Rivera parachuted into shallow center field. A sure Dodgers victory turned into a stunning, 4-3 Orioles conquest before a delirious, announced sellout crowd of 42,612.
And so on a night designed by the Orioles to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Cal Ripken Jr.’s ultimate feat of longevity, Yamamoto came tantalizingly close to the greatest single-game act of staying power – only for his team’s miseries to somehow worsen.
‘There’s really no words,’ said a stunned Treinen, who had not allowed an earned run in his last 10 appearances. ‘I just need to throw strikes and I didn’t do that and it cost one of the better outings I’ve ever seen in my career with Yama. He deserved better than that. The offense deserved better than that.
‘I had to get one flippin’ out. I didn’t do it.’
Yamamoto fell just two strikes shy of Major League Baseball’s first no-hitter this season. Instead, the Dodgers suffered their fifth consecutive loss to a last-place team, and sixth overall, this by far the biggest gut punch in that stretch.
Especially given how great Yamamoto was.
He struck out 10 in 8 2/3 innings. Walked just two. Flashed a devastating three-pitch mix, his blazing 96.7 mph average fastball the battering ram to set up his knee-buckling splitter, his slider and curveball.
And then it all unraveled, setting the stage for Scott to give up his second walk-off hit in as many nights and the Dodgers to once again end up on the wrong side of history.
It was just the second time since 1961 the Dodgers had a no-hit bid broken up with two outs in the ninth or later; lefty Rich Hill last suffered such an indignity, pitching nine hitless innings before giving up a 10th-inning walk-off home run to Josh Harrison at Pittsburgh on Aug. 23, 2017.
And Holliday, the Orioles’ promising second-year second baseman, grabbed his own piece of history. According to MLB.com, Holliday became the eighth player since such records were kept to break up a no-hitter with a home run with two outs in the ninth inning.
A sweet twist for the kid: Holliday’s team is the only one to go on to victory. As Yamamoto dominated, Holliday could only imagine a different sort of history, where he was posterized as the final out of Yamamoto’s gem.
“I was like, ‘Oh man, it’s going to come down to me,’ says Holliday, who hit his 17th home run this season and 22nd of his career. ‘I was definitely thinking about it, and kind of nervous because it’s kind of a big thing.
‘It was fun to be able to break it up. He threw the ball really great.”
And Yamamoto said he did not regret the placement of the 2-1 cutter he threw Holliday. Nonetheless, it was the Dodgers – now 78-64 but rapidly sinking in the National League playoff pantheon – ruing the result.
‘It’s hard to recount a game like this,’ says Roberts, ‘where there’s so many things you feel like you can get a little bit of momentum, build off a great outing by Yoshinobu and take that into tomorrow.
‘And obviously it completely flipped.’
On this night, Scott was hardly to blame; he simply could not finish off Rivera, who dumped the ball into center as Camden Yards roared. All Scott could do was retrieve the ball thrown in from the outfield and spike it at the mound in disgust.
Yamamoto, 27, stretched himself to 112 pitches, beyond his highs of 110 throws and seven innings in his two seasons with the Dodgers. Yamamoto did throw 138 pitches to win Game 6 of the 2023 Japan Series for the Orix Buffaloes, before signing a 12-year, $325 million contract to come to L.A.
While he had plenty of star turns during their 2024 run to the World Series title – most notably five shutout innings against San Diego in the decisive Game 5 of the NLDS, and a one-run conquest of the New York Yankees in the Fall Classic’s Game 2 – never before had it all come together like this.
Yamamoto’s effort picked up steam in the fifth inning, right after former Orioles Bobby Bonilla and Rafael Palmeiro shoved Ripken back out on the field, reprising the night of Sept. 6, 1995, when they insisted he celebrate when his 2,131st consecutive game went official, breaking Lou Gehrig’s all-time mark.
The field was empty for several minutes as the maneuver unfolded, and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts came out and had a lively conversation with the umpires as it dragged on.
Yet Yamamoto only seemed to further lock in.
He needed just 12 pitches each to complete the fifth and sixth innings and 11 pitches to get through the seventh, along the way punching out Colton Cowser, Dylan Beavers, Holliday and Jeremiah Jackson, the latter two on nasty 94-mph splitters.
He fanned Beavers again in the eighth – another splitter – in a nine-pitch eighth, keeping his pitch count at a manageable 104 to set him up for what seemed to be a historic ninth.
It looked like he’d achieve the feat in short order: Yamamoto induced three swings and misses from Alex Jackson for the first out, on a slider, fastball and slider, as if to show off. Coby Mayo then flew out to center on the first pitch.
Yet on his 112th pitch, Holliday smacked a 2-1 cutter to right field, and it tucked just to the left of the high wall and past the reach of Andy Pages.
Roberts lifted him after that, only for Treinen to implode and the Orioles to reclaim the glory on a night they honored their Ironman.
‘I felt he deserved the chance to get a no-hitter,’ says Roberts. ‘The guys were feeling it for him, pulling for him, and I wanted it bad for him. I did.’
Instead, the bitterest disappointment in a September full of them for the Dodgers.