Shohei Ohtanis big day, Yoshinobu Yamamotos complete game lift Dodgers past Yankees

NEW YORK — Shohei Ohtani’s ailing left knee is set to keep him off the mound for the foreseeable future.But in the early game of a Sunday doubleheader against the Yankees, the two-way star offered the latest sign that his ongoing injury isn’t doing much to hamper his bat.In the Dodgers’ 8-2 win, which was played Sunday afternoon following a Saturday night rainout, Ohtani opened the scoring with an RBI double in the third inning, came around to score on Freddie Freeman’s RBI single later in the frame and set the Dodgers on course to a series-clinching victory at Yankee Stadium — one that was also backed up by Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s two-run complete-game effort.Ohtani’s double came after a one-out single from Tommy Edman in the third inning, when the slugger roped an 111 mph line drive over the head of Max Schuemann in right. The ball clanged off the wall.The Yankees’ relay was too late to get Edman at the plate.

And for the rest of the game, the Dodgers wouldn’t trail, riding Yamamoto’s first career regular-season complete game (to go along with his back-to-back complete games in last year’s playoffs) to a second straight victory coming out of the All-Star break.There was a brief moment of concern with Ohtani’s left knee his next time up.In the fifth inning, he fouled a ball off his knee before grounding to second and appeared to run somewhat gingerly back to the dugout.However, he stayed in the game, finished his 2-for-5 day with another RBI (his 60th of the season) on a single in the eighth, and showed that — for now, at least — his knee problem is only problematic for his pitching.The Dodgers were struggling going into the All-Star break, getting swept by the Dbacks and dropping four of five overall.But they’ve kicked off the second half with an impressive performance here in the Bronx, collecting their third straight series win at Yankee Stadium (which doesn’t even include their title-clinching trip in the 2024 World Series) dat...