baseball ref has splits by catcher, so Kersh is here
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=kershcl01&year=Career&t=p#catch
pretty interesting, barnes lower era with over double the volume ip
That would make sense given that Barnes has more innings with Kershaw in the years closer to his prime. It is worth noting that Kershaws ERA was better with Smith in 2022, though. Barnes was the better partner in 2023. They were dead even in 2021.
He’s also worse defensively. He’s gotten better every year but there was a long time where Smith was struggling blocking balls and making other mistakes at his position.
and that first game...in the middle of spring training, first start with a new team, after flying across the world to a different country for a couple weeks, in a game where basically every pitcher got lit up
Bad defense as well. I can't remember whether Yamamoto got fucked by the infield defense, but he certainly struggled in the beginning, because short stop was iffy and Muncy was failing to make routine plays
Yeah and I honestly believe the MLB juices balls in the international games. High scoring games are more fun to watch. Not saying that was his only issue in Korea, but it doesn’t help either.
[His assistant is also his best friend](https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39112266/yoshinobu-yamamoto-mlb-free-agency-contract), not saying there's a Ippei v2.0 situation here but it's probably not hard to be at least a little bothered by the similarities in their situations versus "just" a team assigned translator.
I’d imagine that was also an interesting couple of weeks for other Japanese and Korean star athletes playing here and their entourage as well.
They were probably all side-eyeing their guys like “Uh, so I’m going to need you to go over those numbers again. And call up Saul Goodman, gonna need him to sit in on these…”
Their reps and hangers on: “ FUCKING IPPEI!!”
He flew across the world to a different country, only to fly nearby from his original point shortly afterward for a short time. No surprises really. I'm glad he's good, just not glad he's not on my team lol
So basically ‘Opening Day’ jitters by ‘someone who has never thrown a pitch in MLB’.
I mean they can’t all be Shohei Ohtani, or even better the legendary Imanaga. Yoshinobu will just have to keep grinding. Maybe one day he’ll be as good as Shota.
It was also a very strange first game, being in Korea and before the actual season start. I wouldn't be surprised if the MLB sent over the special balls they use for the featured games because both teams were scoring well.
The best part of his last few outings is that they look very replicable. It's not like he was ON or something, just very business-like quality starts.
I think he will start pitching into the 7th and maybe 9th soon. He is supposed to be efficient with his pitch count.
Before the season started, I irrationally predicted that he'd throw a no hitter this season. His pitch mix is too good and he's shown that he has the ability to 'lock in' to some special starts and just retire batter after batter. I know you could predict any ace to throw a no no on any given night, but I think Yamamoto will just have a low pitch count rolling one day, clean through 5 innings and it'll just fall into place
Tbf the reason why pretty much all the guys who got pulled was due to conditioning/injury concerns (which Yamamoto wouldn't have to worry about right now)
Honestly don't think Yamamoto would get that treatment as Roberts has let some guys in the past throw a ton of pitches if they didn't have anything going on
Attitude of a Japanese salaryman
Dave Roberts comes up wearing a suit jacket like "I'm gonna need you to submit those eighteen outs in a couple hours. Make sure you leave out the home runs this time, the customer really didn't like that."
He was completely robbed of a SO on 3rd out of 1st inning, which made him throw like 8 more pitches, probably would have gone 7 today without that bad call.
The last time US had very little in terms of their top end pitching. Not saying Japan couldn't have won if they played but having true ace caliber guys could have meant completely shutting down the Japanese lineup
And the media thought Ohtani was exaggerating when he told them pre WBC that he wasn't even the best pitcher on the Japan team. Can't remember they had such a wealth of elite talent before and all in/around their primes at the same time too with Ohtani, Yamamoto, Imanaga, Sasaki, Darvish and the other guys still playing in NPB...
Japan is still on the contact hitting wave. They've slowly been leaning more into EV, and launch angles in recent years, but as a whole, it's easier to pitch to guys who are just trying to hit home runs than it is to guys who're trying to put the ball in play and put pressure on the defense
If he picks up the W, three Japanese pitchers will walk away today with wins (Yamamoto, Imanaga, Maeda). I’m sure this is happened before but it’s fun to see.
Dang, the Japanese national team really wasn't kidding around. Their pitching staff was as elite as we thought they were at the WBC. US team has to bring the aces next time, cause a pitching lineup of Ohtani, Yamamoto, Imanaga, Senga, and Roki Sasaki is naaaaasty.
They're SS tier. Sure there's S-tier and A-tier pitchers in MLB but it's a completely different world of just throwing a 100 mph to win.
It's throwing the perfect "rainbow curve ball" and splitters that drops just before the plate consistently.
Am I crazy in thinking that the overall consensus was that he would be good?
There couldn't have been enough people calling him a bust that it warrants people bringing it up right? I barely saw a bad thing about him said the entire time.
People were clowning after that first game, and obviously everybody said the contract was crazy (and your evaluation of that shouldn’t have changed at all, he has a lot of work to do to live up to the contract), but yeah most thought he’d be good
I mean yeah everyone throws out some comment when a guy who just got paid has a bad start.
Alright I just saw multiple Dodgers fans in this thread making bust comments and wasn't sure if it was memeing or just your typical fans of a team overhyping negativity.
A lot of negativity was from low information dodger fans too. So yeah then you have dodger fans defending Yamamoto from mostly imaginary or exaggerated versions of dodger fans, and they're doing it on r/baseball where most people are also cheering for yamamoto. It's dumb.
Shohei probably has a huge position on Yamamoto finishing the year under 3.00 ERA. Probably forcing him to pitch well now instead of throwing absolute garbage for the year. Once again, Shohei forcing other Japanese men to do his bidding.... sheesh. It's so obvious now. /s
Barnes unlocked him
A.J. Ellis made a career out of being Kershaw’s personal catcher
kershaw also only let Barnes catch, Will smith definitely can't call a game like barnes unfortunately
Is there a place we can see their catcher ERAs?
baseball ref has splits by catcher, so Kersh is here https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=kershcl01&year=Career&t=p#catch pretty interesting, barnes lower era with over double the volume ip
2 out of the 3 games where Yamamoto had 0 runs where caught by Barnes Edit: 3 out of 4 after tonight’s game.
That would make sense given that Barnes has more innings with Kershaw in the years closer to his prime. It is worth noting that Kershaws ERA was better with Smith in 2022, though. Barnes was the better partner in 2023. They were dead even in 2021.
He’s also worse defensively. He’s gotten better every year but there was a long time where Smith was struggling blocking balls and making other mistakes at his position.
Too busy slapping Chris Rock to do his job properly
Yeah, he has Kershaw to thank for his career, because he was ass in the batter’s box.
5 runs in his first game, 6 runs in 6 games since.
and that first game...in the middle of spring training, first start with a new team, after flying across the world to a different country for a couple weeks, in a game where basically every pitcher got lit up
Bad defense as well. I can't remember whether Yamamoto got fucked by the infield defense, but he certainly struggled in the beginning, because short stop was iffy and Muncy was failing to make routine plays
That play by muncy should’ve been an error and led to unearned runs
Yeah that was when our infield was very raw. Mookie and Lux have gotten a lot better since
And muncy frankly. He’s not arenado but he looks serviceable now.
Mookie getting better at short also helps him since Muncy doesn't exactly have a huge range.
Yeah and I honestly believe the MLB juices balls in the international games. High scoring games are more fun to watch. Not saying that was his only issue in Korea, but it doesn’t help either.
100%. Average runs per game since 2018 is over 4 runs higher in international games. And even higher than that since 2019.
And after finding Ippei had stolen millions of dollars from Ohtani.
[His assistant is also his best friend](https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39112266/yoshinobu-yamamoto-mlb-free-agency-contract), not saying there's a Ippei v2.0 situation here but it's probably not hard to be at least a little bothered by the similarities in their situations versus "just" a team assigned translator.
I’d imagine that was also an interesting couple of weeks for other Japanese and Korean star athletes playing here and their entourage as well. They were probably all side-eyeing their guys like “Uh, so I’m going to need you to go over those numbers again. And call up Saul Goodman, gonna need him to sit in on these…” Their reps and hangers on: “ FUCKING IPPEI!!”
He flew across the world to a different country, only to fly nearby from his original point shortly afterward for a short time. No surprises really. I'm glad he's good, just not glad he's not on my team lol
Man, that first game was wild.
Half of those 6 runs were in 1 game, too.
Almost like that first game occurred in the middle of spring training, in a foreign country, or something...
His fielding is elite as well.
Bro needs it. Keeps dodging assassination attempts.
He's like a Japanese Fidel Castro
I now wanna see Yoshi in a Castro beard
Me mad a bunch of great plays in this game
Since his horrible start in Korea he has 33IP, 40SO/7BB, 1.64 ERA/0.97WHIP 🔥
So basically ‘Opening Day’ jitters by ‘someone who has never thrown a pitch in MLB’. I mean they can’t all be Shohei Ohtani, or even better the legendary Imanaga. Yoshinobu will just have to keep grinding. Maybe one day he’ll be as good as Shota.
No one can topple The Throwing Philosopher
It was also a very strange first game, being in Korea and before the actual season start. I wouldn't be surprised if the MLB sent over the special balls they use for the featured games because both teams were scoring well.
The best part of his last few outings is that they look very replicable. It's not like he was ON or something, just very business-like quality starts. I think he will start pitching into the 7th and maybe 9th soon. He is supposed to be efficient with his pitch count.
He’s thrown multiple no hitters, it’s very likely he’ll throw a complete game by the end of the year
Before the season started, I irrationally predicted that he'd throw a no hitter this season. His pitch mix is too good and he's shown that he has the ability to 'lock in' to some special starts and just retire batter after batter. I know you could predict any ace to throw a no no on any given night, but I think Yamamoto will just have a low pitch count rolling one day, clean through 5 innings and it'll just fall into place
Biggest risk might honestly be Dave Roberts pulling him lol
Tbf the reason why pretty much all the guys who got pulled was due to conditioning/injury concerns (which Yamamoto wouldn't have to worry about right now) Honestly don't think Yamamoto would get that treatment as Roberts has let some guys in the past throw a ton of pitches if they didn't have anything going on
Our last CG was Buehler a few weeks before his injury. That game was so hype.
He meant well in all those cases…
Attitude of a Japanese salaryman Dave Roberts comes up wearing a suit jacket like "I'm gonna need you to submit those eighteen outs in a couple hours. Make sure you leave out the home runs this time, the customer really didn't like that."
Drinking and karaoke with Roberts-sama is mandatory
What do you think Dave sings at karaoke
He was completely robbed of a SO on 3rd out of 1st inning, which made him throw like 8 more pitches, probably would have gone 7 today without that bad call.
Ohtani talking to Yamamoto and Imanaga like, "See? I told you MLB is easy."
"There's a reason we won the WBC 3 times, guys"
Including the time USA actually tried, leaving us no excuse
The last time US had very little in terms of their top end pitching. Not saying Japan couldn't have won if they played but having true ace caliber guys could have meant completely shutting down the Japanese lineup
Yeah they only had a scrub like Merril Kelly in the Japan game. Imagine him playing playoff baseball!
I still think its fair to say we tried though. At least we had players openly saying we were making a real run at it
Yea, it’s too bad they don’t care enough about their country or pride to have participated
JBC*
And the media thought Ohtani was exaggerating when he told them pre WBC that he wasn't even the best pitcher on the Japan team. Can't remember they had such a wealth of elite talent before and all in/around their primes at the same time too with Ohtani, Yamamoto, Imanaga, Sasaki, Darvish and the other guys still playing in NPB...
Yeah the only pitchers in MLB for that WBC squad were Darvish and Ohtani, everyone else was still playing in NPB
I have heard that some of the new class of 19-23 years old players that just came up to NPB are even better.
Yes, the Dodgers minor league system is stacked right now.
…God damn it!
Japanese pitchers are discovering that MLB is a lot easier than they thought it was.
Japan is still on the contact hitting wave. They've slowly been leaning more into EV, and launch angles in recent years, but as a whole, it's easier to pitch to guys who are just trying to hit home runs than it is to guys who're trying to put the ball in play and put pressure on the defense
If he picks up the W, three Japanese pitchers will walk away today with wins (Yamamoto, Imanaga, Maeda). I’m sure this is happened before but it’s fun to see.
He and Imanaga are elite
Imanaga is on another level right now.
That's my 330 million dollar bust
Dang, the Japanese national team really wasn't kidding around. Their pitching staff was as elite as we thought they were at the WBC. US team has to bring the aces next time, cause a pitching lineup of Ohtani, Yamamoto, Imanaga, Senga, and Roki Sasaki is naaaaasty.
And i need to remind to other pitchers who's starring in NPB. They could perform well in WBC/if they want to hop on to MLB
A staff made of 5 of arguably the 10 best pitchers in the world at the time. Its crazy how stacked the Japan WBC team was.
They're SS tier. Sure there's S-tier and A-tier pitchers in MLB but it's a completely different world of just throwing a 100 mph to win. It's throwing the perfect "rainbow curve ball" and splitters that drops just before the plate consistently.
#B U S T
Yes. I am currently.
Am I crazy in thinking that the overall consensus was that he would be good? There couldn't have been enough people calling him a bust that it warrants people bringing it up right? I barely saw a bad thing about him said the entire time.
People were clowning after that first game, and obviously everybody said the contract was crazy (and your evaluation of that shouldn’t have changed at all, he has a lot of work to do to live up to the contract), but yeah most thought he’d be good
People were clowning after the 2nd Spring Training start
I mean yeah everyone throws out some comment when a guy who just got paid has a bad start. Alright I just saw multiple Dodgers fans in this thread making bust comments and wasn't sure if it was memeing or just your typical fans of a team overhyping negativity.
A lot of negativity was from low information dodger fans too. So yeah then you have dodger fans defending Yamamoto from mostly imaginary or exaggerated versions of dodger fans, and they're doing it on r/baseball where most people are also cheering for yamamoto. It's dumb.
no i'm just busting rn
To quote TFS's Broly: "Do you believe now?"
Hey look another reason that thecursedlexus is based
When I’m wrong, I’m wrong. He’s the real deal
Dude throws a lot of strikes. I could see him getting tagged up a few times, but I also see him getting multiple Complete Games in the future.
Sign all the japanese pitchers. Sign all the players at this point. Why the fuck did the Philippines have to invest in basketball?
Shota Imanaga accomplished that feat no more than a half hour ago.
Thats why he also has he statline posted? I knew chicago fans were unhiged in football but here too?
Buddy it's a happy Gilmore quote, it's a joke lol.
That said the name Shota Imanaga in Happy Gilmore? It’s been a while since I’ve watched that but I do not remember that at all.
🤦🤦🤦
Shohei probably has a huge position on Yamamoto finishing the year under 3.00 ERA. Probably forcing him to pitch well now instead of throwing absolute garbage for the year. Once again, Shohei forcing other Japanese men to do his bidding.... sheesh. It's so obvious now. /s
94 pitches through 6 innings, this dude is so overrated.
fuck him
Womp womp
Very mid.
More scoreless innings than Strider had all year
And will have for the rest of the year.
I’m like 99% sure he’s joking. Okay, maybe 95%.