LOS ANGELES _ Jordan Yamamoto, stellar through his first half-dozen starts for the Miami Marlins since being called up in mid-June, hit his first major speed bump at the major-league level.
Spotty command against the Los Angeles Dodgers became his weakness on Sunday. The Dodgers capitalized.
Long at-bat after long at-bat _ and a pair of two-run home runs _ eventually did Yamamoto in and gave the Dodgers enough ammunition to cruise to a 9-0 series-sweeping win over the Marlins at Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers (67-35) won the first two games of the set 2-1 on Friday and 10-6 on Saturday. The Marlins (36-61) have now been shut out 15 times this season.
Yamamoto lasted just four innings in the first loss of his short MLB career. Los Angeles pushed his pitch count up to 91 pitches by the time he recorded his 12th and final out. Half of the 18 batters he faced battled for at least six pitches.
He gave up the first two home runs of his career _ two-run shots to Max Muncy in the first and Joc Pederson in the third _ after only allowing three extra-base hits of any kind through the first 34 innings of his career. The Dodgers tacked on a fifth run on an Enrique Hernandez RBI double in the fourth.
A.J. Pollock drove in four more runs for Los Angeles against the Marlins bullpen, hitting an RBI single to left against Wei-Yin Chen in the fifth and then blasting a three-run home run to right-center field off Tayron Guerrero in the seventh.
The Marlins offense, meanwhile, recorded just six hits and never had a runner advance farther than second base. Walker Buehler, the third All-Star starting pitcher the Marlins faced this series, shut down the Marlins just like Hyun-Jin Ryu and Clayton Kershaw did during the first two games of the set.
Buehler struck out 11 Marlins batters and did not surrender a walk over seven innings. For the three-game series, Dodgers starters gave up just 11 hits and one earned run _ a Jorge Alfaro RBI double off Ryu on Friday for the first run of the series _ while striking out 28 Marlins batters over 20 innings.
The Dodgers outscored the Marlins 21-7, with five of Miami's runs coming in an eighth-inning rally attempt on Saturday night.
