Yamamoto outduels Darvish as Dodgers drop Padres 2-0 to advance in MLB playoffs

LOS ANGELES: Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched five brilliant innings and Los Angeles homered twice in a 2-0 victory over the San Diego Padres on Friday that propelled the Dodgers into the National League Championship Series.

Two days after fending off elimination, the Dodgers completed a 3-2 victory over the Padres in the best-of-five National League division series and will host the New York Mets in game one of the best-of-seven NLCS on Sunday.

Yamamoto came out on top in a historic duel with San Diego hurler Yu Darvish — the first Major League Baseball post-season matchup between two Japanese-born starting pitchers.

“I think in Japan, a lot of fans were looking forward to today’s matchup,” said Yamamoto, who added that he was determined to improve on a lackluster performance in the Dodgers’ Game 1 win.

“The last outing, I didn’t do my job well,” he said.

“I was just trying to focus on getting myself ready, preparing more meticulously... I think my mechanics was locked in today,” said the pitcher, who gave up two hits over five innings with one walk and two strikeouts, throwing 63 pitches — 39 of them strikes.

“He set the tone,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, adding that he was confident Yamamoto would rise to the occasion based on his past performances — including for Japan in the World Baseball Classic.

“He’s pitched in big ball games,” Roberts said. “And I believed in him. I knew he was going to rise to the occasion.

“And he was outstanding tonight. And I knew he wasn’t going to run from this spot. I’m looking forward to riding him through the World Series.”

Yamamoto allowed back-to-back singles to Kyle Higashioka and Luis Arraez in the third inning. But he induced Fernando Tatis Jr. to hit into an inning-ending double play and retired the last seven batters he faced before turning it over to the Dodgers relievers — who closed it out without allowing a hit over four innings.

Darvish pitched 6 2/3 impressive innings, but he gave up solo home runs to Enrique Hernandez and Teoscar Hernandez, and that was all the Dodgers needed.

Puerto Rican slugger Hernandez crushed a solo shot to left field to put the Dodgers up 1-0 in the second inning, pouncing on a first-pitch fastball from Darvish, who had walked Max Muncy to open the inning before Will Smith hit into a double play.

It was the 14th post-season homer for 33-year-old Hernandez.

Darvish retired 14 straight batters before Teoscar Hernandez made it 2-0 in the seventh, launching a 420-foot blast into the left field seats.

When the Dominican slugger tossed his bat away to round the bases Dodger Stadium erupted.

“This is my first time in this kind of atmosphere,” Hernandez, who inked a one-year, $23.5-million deal with the Dodgers in January, told broadcaster Fox. “But I love this. This is why I came here.”

Padres manager Mike Shildt could find little to fault in Darvish’s performance.

“I thought Yu was magnificent again,” Shildt said. “Had them off balance. Couple of swings got him. Other than that, he was really good.”

But San Diego’s vaunted hitters — three-time batting champion Arraez, Tatis Jr., Jurickson Profar and Manny Machado, combined to go 1-for-14 at the plate in Game 5.

The Padres failed to score a run in the last 24 innings of the series.

“I think ‘stunning’ is appropriate,” Shildt said of the drought.

The Dodgers, the 2020 World Series champions, are back in the league championship series for the first time since 2021 after division series defeats the past two seasons.

The victory means Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani will have a chance to battle for a World Series berth.

Ohtani earned two American League Most Valuable Player awards in six seasons with the Los Angeles Angels but is in the playoffs for the first time after jumping to the Dodgers in December in a record 10-year, $700 million deal.