The Dodgers will have a 4-1 lead to new closer Tanner Scott.
Dodgers add an insurance run here on Shohei’s double and Teoscar Hernández’s single. They’ve got two on with one out against former Dodger Ryan Brasier, and are threatening for more.
The Dodgers are nursing their 3-1 lead. The Cubs have had one baserunner (a hit-by-pitch) since Ian Happ’s leadoff single in the third inning. Seiya Suzuki’s broken three bats today.
Ben Casparius is in with the Dodgers up 3-1 in the seventh. I’m missing Dayn’s Shakespeare quotes from last October.
Yamamoto is out of the game and Anthony Banda set down the side on 11 pitches in the sixth. Crisp pace to these last few innings.
Yamamoto with a sharp 1-2-3 fifth after the Dodgers put up three runs in the top of the inning. He’s thrown 72 pitches after topping out at 75 pitches on Opening Day. Yamamoto might — might — be done for the day. If he is, he was terrific.
Will Smith singles to bring home L.A.’s third run.
After Shohei Ohtani singled through the right side to give the Dodgers their first hit of the season, Tommy Edman sliced a single to left field to bring home L.A.’s first run of the game. Ian Happ couldn’t come up with the diving catch, though it would have been a sac fly even if he had caught it.
The next batter, Teoscar Hernández, hit a potential 5-4-3 double play, but Cubs’ second baseman Jon Berti threw the ball away. The error allowed the Dodgers to take a 2-1 lead. This all started with a walk to No. 9 hitter Andy Pages. Can’t keep walking Dodgers and getting away with it.
The Dodgers have their first hit. He pulls a single through the right side, putting runners on the corners with one out. The Dodgers have two on with less than two outs for the third time in the last four innings.
Four walks, two strikeouts, zero hits. Imanaga threw 69 pitches and the Dodgers made him work hard the last three innings. Ben Brown is in now. Very different look here for the Dodgers. Command lefty to hard-throwing righty.
Imanaga strands both walks. Second time in four innings. The Dodgers are hitless through four. It’s still 1-0 Cubbies.
He made more than $200 million in his career. Probably enough to afford a nice bleacher ticket.
Craig Counsell’s on the bullpen phone here in the fourth inning. Imanaga is at 65 pitches. He topped out at 75 pitches in spring training (so did Yamamoto). Two walks have the Dodgers in business here. Four walks are Imanaga’s MLB career high.
Miguel Amaya lines a two-out double into the right-center field gap to score Swanson. Yamamoto missed with a fastball over the plate. Here is the season’s first run:
Amaya turned 26 last week and last year’s .232/.288/.357 line doesn’t tell the whole story. He hit .201/.266/.288 in the first half and .271/.316/.444 in the second half after making a few adjustments at the plate. The Cubs gave Carson Kelly a nice contract to be a veteran backup catcher/safety net, but Amaya is the starter behind the plate. He’s a breakout pick (if you don’t consider last year a breakout).
And also the season’s first hit. Yamamoto hung a curveball and Dansby Swanson lined a single back up the middle. Pete Crow-Armstrong is at the plate now getting P-C-A chants at the Tokyo Dome.
Two straight walks, three straight pop ups. Imanaga escapes.
Will Smith and Max Muncy work back-to-back walks to start the second inning. The Dodgers will do that. No team chased out of the zone less last season, and it’s more or less the same lineup this year.
I already miss ABS
Yamamoto strands the leadoff walk. Pop up, chopper back to the mound, fly out to center. It’s 0-0 after the first.
Hey, we have Statcast for this game. Look at that. In the first inning, Imanaga and Yamamoto are both up about 2 mph on their fastballs from last season. The adrenaline is flowing.
Ian Happ is 2025’s first baserunner. He worked a leadoff walk. Here’s Seiya Suzuki.
Happy first PitchCom violation of the year, everyone
Tidy 1-2-3 first inning for Imanaga.
Ohtani grounds out to second to start the game/season. Imanaga should have grooved one. Give the people what they want.
Shota Imanaga’s first pitch to Shohei Ohtani is a fastball at the top of the zone for a called strike.
The Cubs’ top prospect will take the field in a major-league game for the first time in just a few minutes. Here’s what our R.J. Anderson wrote over the winter when he ranked Shaw the No. 28 prospect in baseball:
Shaw could find himself on the Opening Day roster after a 35-game stint in Triple-A that saw him produce a .929 OPS. (Later, during the Premier12 tournament, he matched Ken Griffey Jr.’s Team USA single-game record by driving in seven runs.) Shaw routinely makes hard contact, even possessing enough power to drive out more than a handful of balls the other way. That feel for the barrel helps obscure that he has an appetite for elevated fastballs that can get him into some trouble. Shaw has auditioned at several infield positions; he’s certainly probably going to end up at second or third base, with the latter serving as the current favorite given Isaac Paredes‘ inclusion in the Kyle Tucker trade.
It’s not the ankle that hobbled him in the postseason (and he had surgery on over the winter), nor did he catch the illness that kept Mookie Betts out of the lineup.
Pokémon was never my thing as a kid, but I gotta admit, this is pretty cool:
Our Matt Snyder has you covered with his best bets.
Dodgers vs. Cubs best bets: Gambling plays for MLB’s Tokyo Series, including an underrated hitter
If you wanted to catch today’s game at the Tokyo Dome, you had to pay Super Bowl prices to get in. Call it the Shohei Effect (and also Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shota Imanaga, and Seiya Suzuki).
