LOS ANGELES — After naming Tarik Skubal the Game 1 starter of the NLDS earlier on Friday, the Dodgers on Saturday announced that Blake Snell would start Game 2 on Sunday, pushing Yoshinobu Yamamoto to Game 3 on Tuesday in Atlanta.
“We have such talented starters. I think you can roll out any of us in any situation and you’re going to be in a really good spot,” Skubal said Friday of Dodgers rotation depth, echoing comments made this week by Freddie Freeman, Dave Roberts, general manager Brandon Gomes,
and others. “I don’t make any of those decisions. I don’t really think about that. They tell me when I’m going, and I’m ready to go that day. That’s kind of how I approach it.”
Roberts told Skubal the news of his Game 1 start one week ago, when he took the left-hander after seven scoreless innings on 75 pitches on September 25 against the Giants in San Francisco.
“I thought in the moment I was going to be able to finish the game, and he’s like get ready for Game 1,” Skubal said. “That’s how I was told, and obviously excited and fired up and ready to go.”
Skubal’s the most likely starter to pitch on four days rest if needed, and Snell and Tyler Glasnow have a history of pitching on four days rest as well. Yamamoto has never started in the majors on fewer than five days rest, with the one notable asterisk his eight-out relief appearance to close out Game 7 of the 2025 World Series. Yamamoto was the rock of the Dodgers rotation each of the last two seasons, the only starter to remain healthy all season in each of 2025 and 2026. Now he’s pushed to Game 3 of the Dodgers’ opening series, but there is method to the madness.
The Braves as a team hit .240/.300/.396 against left-handed pitchers this season, their 91 wRC+ ranking 24th among 30 MLB teams. Hitting southpaws isn’t something that improved for Atlanta, either. Over the final two months of the season they hit just .238/.287/.383 with an 84 wRC+ against southpaws.
Now they’ll face two lefties to start the first two games of the NLDS in Skubal and Snell. But the matchup wasn’t the only consideration.
“A lot of it this series, the possibility of usage, as well as, as we look out, who’s best lined up,” Roberts said Friday. “I think it’s a good process, appreciating that the most important thing is this series right now. But if you have talented arms at your disposal, it’s prudent to kind of map out potentially how they could line up, and that’s just doing your due diligence.”
Should the Dodgers advance to beat the Braves — not a given, obviously — Yamamoto is the ideal Game 2 starter in a seven-game series, because it allows him to pitch the latter on five days rest, while starting in Game 1 or Game 3 would mean needing to be available to start in Game 5 or 7 on four days rest. And Yamamoto starting in Game 3 of the Division Series on Tuesday would line him up perfectly to potentially start Game 2 of the NLCS on Monday, October 12 on five days rest.
And if Skubal is needed again in the NLDS in Game 5 against the Braves, having Snell at the ready to potentially start Game 1 is a nice fallback option to have. Snell started three Games 1 last postseason for the Dodgers, and won two of them, part of an overall 3.18 ERA in 34 innings, and set a Dodgers franchise postseason record with 41 strikeouts.
There’s also the matter that Yamamoto had a 1.77 ERA and 2.93 FIP on in 12 road starts this season, compared to a 3.13 ERA and 3.65 FIP at home, and 14 of Yamamoto’s 20 home runs allowed were hit at Dodger Stadium. Plus starting him in Game 3 gives Yamamoto his first extended rest of the season, having last started on September 23 with only Wednesday night’s closed scrimmage at Dodger Stadium in between.
“If you’re fortunate enough to keep moving on, things start to get more unpredictable,” Roberts said. “So I think that at the outset, if you can kind of line it up in such a way to giving guys ample rest, it just puts you in a better position for more options down the road. That’s kind of some of the math we had.”
