LOS ANGELES — Yoshinobu Yamamoto outdueled Yu Darvish in a historic playoff matchup of Japanese-born starters, and the Los Angeles Dodgers got home runs from Enrique Hernández and Teoscar Hernández to beat the San Diego Padres 2-0 on Friday and advance to the National League Championship Series.
Yamamoto allowed two hits over five innings for the Dodgers before being pulled after 63 pitches in a decisive Game 5 between heated NL West rivals who were meeting in a division series for the third time in five years.
Shohei Ohtani and the Dodgers will play the wild-card New York Mets in the best-of-seven NLCS starting Sunday night in Los Angeles.
“We’re ready for the next level, and obviously the Mets are playing great baseball,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
It will be the 16th NLCS appearance for the Dodgers in franchise history, the second most by any team since the round began in 1969.
The Dodgers won a decisive Game 5 at home for the first time since taking a 1981 NL Division Series against Houston after a season split into halves following a players’ strike.
Boasting the majors’ best regular-season record of 98-64, they successfully avoided a third straight NLDS elimination and return to the NLCS for the first time since 2021, when they lost to the Atlanta Braves in six games.
“We went through a lot of injuries, a lot of ups and a lot of downs. We fight, we fight and keep going,” Dodgers star Mookie Betts said. “All season everybody says the Dodgers are winning the World Series, the Dodgers are winning the World Series. And we get to this series, and all of a sudden we’re the underdog.”
The Padres’ big hitters went bust with their season on the line. Three-time batting champion Luis Arraez, Fernando Tatis Jr., Jurickson Profar and Manny Machado were 1-for-14 in Game 5 as Los Angeles pitchers retired their last 19 batters.
The Padres’ two hits tied the second fewest in a winner-take-all game. The only team to have fewer hits (1) was the 2022 Mets in the wild-card round against the Padres.
San Diego’s powerful lineup went scoreless for the final 24 innings of the series, dropping the last two games after taking a 2-1 lead back home.
“I think stunning is appropriate,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said.
Yamamoto and Darvish were the first Japanese-born starting pitchers to square off in major league playoff history. The 26-year-old Yamamoto was the fifth rookie to start a winner-take-all game in Dodgers history.
Yamamoto handed the ball to a stellar bullpen that carried the Dodgers during the regular season when their starters were hit hard by injuries. Evan Phillips got five outs, fanning Profar and Machado in the seventh before Alex Vesia whiffed rookie standout Jackson Merrill to end the inning.
Vesia was warming up for the eighth when he exited with an injury. Michael Kopech came on and worked a perfect inning before Blake Treinen got three quick outs for his third career postseason save and second of the series.
With that, the NL West champs spilled out of the dugout for hugs and then headed back into their clubhouse for another celebration.
“Anytime you’re smelling like champagne, it means you’re doing something good,” Betts said.
Darvish, the 38-year-old childhood idol of Ohtani, gave up an early home run to Enrique Hernández, then set down 14 in a row. Teoscar Hernández’s homer chased Darvish in the seventh and made it 2-0.
The Padres and Dodgers combined to retire 26 consecutive batters — the longest streak in a single game in postseason history.
Darvish gave up two runs and three hits in 6⅔ innings, struck out four and walked one. He dropped to 0-5 in elimination games — four of them quality starts.
“I thought Yu was magnificent again. Had them off balance. Couple of swings got him. Other than that, he was really good,” Shildt said.
Darvish and Ohtani teamed to help win last year’s World Baseball Classic for Japan, but they were rivals Friday. Ohtani struck out three times, including twice against Darvish in a game watched on Saturday morning in Japan.
Ohtani hit a tying three-run homer in Game 1, his playoff debut, but was mostly quiet the rest of the series after becoming the first player in major league history to reach 50 homers and 50 stolen bases in a season.
The teams combined to score 43 runs in the first five games of the series, but the winner-take-all finale was a tense pitching affair in front of a sellout crowd of 53,183 that included Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James and a Hollywood contingent of Brad Pitt, Rob Lowe, Bryan Cranston and Jimmy Kimmel.
The wild-card Padres ended the series by not scoring since the second inning of Game 3. They became the first team to lead 2-1 in a best-of-five series and fail to score in the final two games.
Yamamoto successfully covered first base three times after inducing grounders, making it easier on All-Star first baseman Freddie Freeman, who started after missing Game 4 with a sprained right ankle.
The Dodgers led 1-0 on the drive by Enrique Hernández with two outs in the second. It was the 14th career postseason homer for Hernández, who was brought back to the Dodgers this season to make an impact in October.
Los Angeles staved off elimination in San Diego with an 8-0 victory in Game 4 to force the deciding game back home, where fans tossing balls and trash on the field caused a 12-minute delay in a Game 2 loss. The public-address announcer warned fans in the middle of the fifth Friday not to throw objects or go on the field.
ESPN Research and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
