Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto has a first-inning problem

Oops, he did it again.

A single to right field. A walk. A run scoring on a two-out single. Another run scoring on a wild pitch.

Like in two of his three previous starts, Yoshinobu Yamamoto was scored on in the first inning on Monday.

The two runs Yamamoto allowed in the opening frame against the Houston Astros turned out to be of minimal importance, as the Dodgers’ offense awakened in an 8-3 victory at Daikin Park. 

But the couple of early runs charged to Yamamoto point to a larger problem he’s been unable to solve since his move from Japan two years ago.

In 55 regular-season starts over three major-league seasons, Yamamoto has a 4.60 earned-run average in the first inning. 

“My first innings are really bad,” Yamamoto told reporters in Japanese. “I have to do more to figure out why, organize that in my head and make improvements.”

The troubles have followed him into this season, in which his first-inning ERA is 7.71. Take away his first innings and his overall ERA would be 2.20.

The only other Dodgers starter with notable issues in the first inning is Emmet Sheehan. The right-hander has a 12.00 ERA in the first inning.

Justin Wrobleski has been charged with only two runs in his five starts, and each of them was scored in the first inning.

Shohei Ohtani and Roki Sasaki haven’t allowed any earned runs in the opening frames of their starts. Tyler Glasnow has a first-inning ERA of 1.50.

About the two-run first inning by the Astros on Monday, Yamamoto said, “I think I might have been overthrowing. That’s the hardest part. I searched for the right degree of effort and grasped it little by little.”

From the second inning to the sixth, he limited the Astros to one run and three hits. Replaced by Kyle Hurt at the start of the seventh inning, Yamamoto finished the game with a season-high eight strikeouts.

Yamamoto has pitched more than six innings just twice in seven starts this season, and that has been a source of frustration for him.

“The reasons I get these results are in the six innings I pitched,” he said.

He threw 28 pitches in the first inning.

“I want to fix those problems,” Yamamoto said. “I have to fix those problems. When those parts become better, I think it will naturally lead to me going seven innings, eight innings.”

Yamamoto is 3-2 with a 3.09 ERA, which for him counts as a mild slump. He endured a difficult stretch early last season and his longtime trainer Osamu Yada said in spring training that he might encounter something like that again this year.

Yada pointed to how Yamamoto pushes himself “to the point of complete exhaustion” over the winter, and that his training program is designed to make him peak in the second half of the season.

Like he did last year.

For what it’s worth, Yamamoto’s first-inning problems were virtually non-existent in October, as he was scored on in the opening frame of just one of his five postseason starts.

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