Youshinobu Yamamoto started the post season in thirteenth place in the Bill James Pitcher Rankings. With an overall great performance and two consecutive complete games, Yamamoto now ranks fifth, passing Saturday night’s opponent Kevin Guasman, who started off in seventh place.

Yamamoto posted consecutive game scores of 83. He only posted one game score as good or better during the regular season, an 86 on Sept. sixth. Note that during the regular season, only 39 or 4860 starts resulted in a game score of 83 or better, 0.8%. Back in 1988, when Orel Hershiser made his great run, there were 131 such games in 4200 starts, 3.1%. This post season, we’ve seen four such games out of 84 starts, 4.8%.