Osaka –

There was a simple reason Orix Buffaloes manager Satoshi Nakajima put his complete faith in Yoshinobu Yamamoto with the season on the line and the ace pitcher coming off the worst start of his career.

“He lost the last time out, but I thought there was no way Yoshinobu Yamamoto was going to be beaten two times in a row,” Nakajima said after the Buffaloes’ series-tying 5-1 win over the Hanshin Tigers in Game 6 of the Japan Series on Saturday night. “I put it all on Yoshinobu in this game.”

Yamamoto proved his manager right in one of the most important outings of his career. Yamamoto went the distance on 138 pitches and held the Tigers to a single run. He set a Japan Series record with 14 strikeouts. He overcame a shaky start by allowing only three baserunners — on three singles — after the fourth inning.

“I thought I would get another chance in the sixth game, so I focused on that,” said Yamamoto, who allowed seven runs in his Game 1 loss. “We had two losses, so it was an elimination game, so I wanted to make sure I did not lose again.”

Yamamoto got stronger as the game progressed and was in dominant form by the fifth. For MLB fans and executives watching and still wondering if their team should sign him, his performance was a baseball equivalent of Michael Jordan’s iconic shrug after his 3-point barrage against the Portland Trail Blazers in the 1992 NBA Finals, as if to ask, “What more can I say?”

If Yamamoto heads to MLB in the offseason like most expect him to, his final start for the Buffaloes — for the foreseeable future at least — was a memorable one.

There was an air of tension early, as Yamamoto, who has struggled in the postseason, allowed a second-inning home run against the Tigers’ Sheldon Neuse. Fans are used to seeing Yamamoto create symphonies on the mound, but he was slightly offbeat to start Game 6.

He allowed the homer and had to deal with traffic on the bases. He got out of a bases-loaded jam in the second and pitched with runners on the corners and one out in the fourth after singles by Kento Itohara and Seiya Kinami. Yamamoto struck out Seishiro Sakamoto before teammate Tomoya Mori bailed him out with a leaping grab against the wall in right field that saved at least one run and likely two.

That was part of a streak of 10 consecutive batters retired as Yamamoto settled into a rhythm and dominated the final five innings to force the series to Game 7.

"I did not do anything special today, I pitched the way I normally do," Yamamoto said. "I got better around halfway through, so I was able to be aggressive."

When it was done, he shared a hug with catcher Kenya Wakatsuki.

“It was finally over,” Yamamoto said when asked how he felt. “I was so happy because I gave everything I had in the end.”

Yamamoto threw more pitches than he had all season and also surpassed the previous Japan Series record of 13 strikeouts that was set by Kimiyasu Kudo of the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks in 1999 and matched by the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters’ Yu Darvish in 2007.

“I knew I was getting a lot of strikeouts,” Yamamoto said. “I only focused on each inning, so I didn’t worry about that.”

Yamamoto’s offseason begins this week. The attention now shifts to the Buffaloes and when they will announce the decision to post Yamamoto, which will set off a frenzy of MLB teams trying to sign him.

Yamamoto will join Fighters pitcher Naoyuki Uwasawa, who is being posted, and Yuki Matsui, a free agent after 10 seasons with the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, as Japanese players on the market during the Hot Stove season in MLB. The DeNA BayStars are expected to add Shota Imanaga to the mix as well.

None come with the pedigree of Yamamoto, the youngest pitcher in that group at age 25. He is also younger than many of the top MLB free agents and is near the top of many free-agent rankings compiled by MLB writers

Yamamoto has a 1.82 ERA in 897 regular-season innings in NPB and has won the past three Sawamura Awards.

His future is extremely bright, but Game 6 was about the present.

“We got beat in the second inning, but then Yamamoto was just as expected,” Wakatsuki said.

Yamamoto went out like a hero in his final start, strapping the Buffaloes to his back and overcoming a shaky beginning to carry them into the last game of the season.

There will likely be no encore in an Orix uniform, and if this was goodbye, what a way to bring down the curtain.