Yoshinobu Yamamoto is Shohei Ohtani's biggest obstacle to NL Cy Young award

Shohei Ohtani has snapped up a number of accolades over the course of his big league career. Winner of the 2018 AL Rookie of the Year, four MVP awards, four Silver Sluggers, five All-Star selections, two World Series rings, and owner of the league's only 50-50 season, the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar has a full trophy case. With that said, all of those superlatives have been a result of his work in the batter's box.

Ohtani, the pitcher, isn't nearly as accomplished. It's not because his skills on the mound are lacking; instead, it's largely due to a shortage of opportunity and availability. The 31-year-old only has one season where he worked as a full-time starter, which came in 2022 and resulted in a fourth-place finish in the AL Cy Young race.

Now, in the first year that the Dodgers have been able to fully unleash him as a starter, folks have been buzzing about his Cy Young candidacy for a long while. With spring training kicking off, Dave Roberts proclaimed that Ohtani would be in the conversation. A month earlier, ESPN claimed Ohtani would take home the hardware as part of their 2026 bold predictions.

Ohtani's spring performance seemed to foreshadow the long-awaited honor coming to fruition this year. It won't be an easy task, but the biggest challenger he will face might share a locker room with him.

The Dodgers dominance will be on display as Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto battle for the NL Cy Young

For a period of time last season, Yoshinobu Yamamoto seemed like the favorite to take home the award. While the 27-year-old ultimately fell short to Paul Skenes, he finished third in the voting in his first season making a full complement of starts.

Since Yamamoto arrived in the bigs in 2024 to the present day, only three NL starters have better ERA's — Skenes, Chris Sale, and Zack Wheeler. You can never count Sale out completely, but he's 37 now and is coming off an injury-plagued 2025 campaign.

As for Wheeler, he's less of a sure thing. He turns 36 next month and is about to make his season debut following surgery to deal with thoracic outlet syndrome. Throughout his rehab starts, he's dealt with a severe velocity dip.

That leaves Skenes as the biggest threat to the Dodgers duo. Skenes is obviously an upper-echelon ace, but he stumbled out of the gate in the season opener, completing just 2/3 of an inning against the lowly New York Mets. It's early, but Skenes hasn't seemed quite as invincible as he's been in the past.

Yamamoto's 2.48 ERA through his first five starts has him picking up right where he left off after last year's 2.49 ERA campaign. Typically, that kind of performance gets rewarded with hardware at the end of the season.

However, then there's Ohtani. He's made one fewer start this season, but there isn't an adequate superlative to truly describe how brilliant he has been. The unicorn has a dental-floss-thin 0.38 ERA over 24 frames and has shown no signs of slowing down.

It's shaping up like the two will be duking it out the whole year for the title, showcasing the dominance of Los Angeles's rotation. Then add in the fact that Tyler Glasnow has been neck-and-neck with Yamamoto thus far, and two-time Cy Young winner Blake Snell is working his way back, and it's a near-certainty that the Cy Young chase runs through LA.

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