Yoshinobu Yamamoto's Major League Baseball debut consisted of a single five-run inning as he took the loss in the Los Angeles Dodgers' 15-11 defeat to the San Diego Padres on Thursday.
The Japanese right-hander had little command against the nine batters he faced in the finale of the two-game series at Seoul's Gocheok Sky Dome. Yamamoto allowed four hits, a hit batsman and a walk, digging a hole even six RBIs from Mookie Betts could not overcome.
Xander Bogaerts singled off Yamamoto's first pitch, Jake Cronenworth slammed a high hanging splitter for a two-run no-out triple. A walk, a sacrifice fly by South Korea's Kim Ha Seong, and a pair of two-out, run-scoring hits made it 5-0 before Yamamoto escaped the inning on 43 pitches with his second strikeout.
Shohei Ohtani, the pre-game focus of attention after his interpreter Ippei Mizuhara was fired for allegedly stealing at least $4.5 million from him to cover gambling losses, went 1-for-5 with a sacrifice fly and repeatedly hammered the ball to the warning track.
Left-handed reliever Yuki Matsui, who made his MLB debut the night before, finished the seventh for the Padres. He retired Ohtani on a first-pitch fly to the wall, and allowed two singles and an inherited runner to score in two-thirds of an inning.
The Dodgers scored a run in each of their first two innings, and both teams put up four-run thirds to make it 9-6.
Betts hit a two-run home run in the fifth and singled in two more runs in the eighth to trim the Padres' lead to 12-11, but Manny Machado extended the lead again with a three-run homer in the ninth.
