Yamamoto Makes MLB History: Five Straight Postseason Wins, One Run or Fewer, Zero Precedent

ATLANTA — The fifth inning is where October usually finds the flaw. Yoshinobu Yamamoto had cruised through four scoreless frames on Tuesday night, and then it arrived all at once: back-to-back singles from Mauricio Dubón and Lane Thomas, a walk to pinch-hitter Rowdy Tellez with one out, and the bases loaded with the tying runs on and Ronald Acuña Jr. — a former MVP — walking to the plate. Yamamoto fell behind 3-1. He refused to give in and throw a strike for the sake of it. One splitter nicked the bottom of the zone, Acuña grounded it to second, and the inning was over with the Dodgers still up 3-1. Two innings later he walked off having done something no pitcher in baseball history had ever done.

The recordFive straight wins. One run or fewer, every time. All on the road.

Per OptaSTATS, Yamamoto is the only pitcher in MLB history to earn the win in five straight postseason appearances while allowing no more than one run and one walk in any of them. All five victories came on the road. And there was more: since pitches were first tracked in 1988, he is the only pitcher to start a postseason game on the road and go at least seven innings with 10 or more strikeouts and one walk or fewer — in 98 pitches. The New York Post and ClutchPoints both flagged the milestones within hours of the final out, and the broadcast added the one that might be the most absurd of all: Yamamoto’s teams are now 34-0 — regular season and postseason — when they give him at least three runs of support while he’s on the mound. Give him three runs, and you might as well start shaking hands.

“I was confident and able to control all my pitches today,” Yamamoto said through a translator after the game. On the fifth-inning escape, his philosophy was pure Yamamoto: “As long as I didn’t give up runs, I didn’t mind if I ran up my pitch count. I was going to throw the ball in places in which it would be difficult to hit.”

The streakFrom the 2025 World Series MVP to the best October arm alive

This didn’t start Tuesday. Yamamoto was named the 2025 World Series MVP after going 5-1 with a 1.45 ERA across six postseason outings last fall — including two complete games and a Game 7 save on zero days’ rest. He is 8-1 with a 2.14 ERA in 11 career postseason outings, with a 0.83 WHIP and 58 strikeouts over 63 innings dating back to 2024. Tuesday was his first postseason start since that MVP performance, and he outdueled a future Hall of Famer to do it. October is supposed to expose pitchers. Yamamoto seems to be at his best when the lights are the brightest — and his latest masterpiece extended a streak that now has no precedent to compare it to.

The duelSale was excellent. It didn’t matter.

Chris Sale deserved better and got October instead. The Braves ace stranded six Dodgers through three innings — two in the first, the bases loaded in the third — and was still touching 100 mph, in Walt Weiss’s words. Then the fourth: Andy Pages singled, Kiké Hernández crushed a 406-foot two-run homer — his 17th career postseason homer, one behind Reggie Jackson’s 18 and into the top 20 in MLB history — and Freddie Freeman, in his first postseason game back in Atlanta, followed with a solo shot, the 18th of his October career, tying him for 10th all time. Sale finished five innings, seven hits, three runs, seven strikeouts, no walks. He lost 3-1. That’s the cruelty of facing Yamamoto in October.

The homers carried their own history. Hernández is now the only player in MLB history with at least 100 career homers to have 10 percent or more of them come in the postseason, per OptaSTATS. Freeman, who spent 12 seasons in Atlanta and won the 2021 title there, had a would-be homer robbed by Dubón’s leaping catch in the third — then made sure the next one couldn’t be caught. He put three balls in play over 101 mph against his former team. “I’ve got a gray uniform on,” Freeman said. “I expect boos. It’s OK. … It’s all love. I still love everybody here, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

What’s nextA closeout game, and a three-peat on the horizon

The Dodgers can reach the NLCS with a win Wednesday night (6 PM ET, FS1), with Tyler Glasnow making his first start of the postseason against Atlanta’s Tyler Mahle — the deadline pickup with a 1.99 ERA over nine starts as a Brave. Win, and Los Angeles takes another step toward becoming the first National League team to win three consecutive World Series. Lose, and it’s back to Los Angeles for a winner-take-all Game 5 on Friday, with Yamamoto’s arm presumably lurking somewhere in the plans. Either way, October has a new standard for dominance, and it wears Dodger blue. Read the full daily postseason roundup, the Game 3 takeaways, and all of Previously’s MLB coverage.