The Padres will face Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Thursday for the first time since the $325 million ace and Dodgers relievers held them scoreless in the most important San Diego-Los Angeles sports contest ever played.

The Dodgers’ 2-0 victory in the winner-take-all Game 5 of October’s National League Division Series sent Los Angeles onward in a World Series tournament they would win.

The Padres, meanwhile, were left with perhaps the most consequential defeat in their history.

Padres hitters had to love their chances heading into Game 5 at Dodger Stadium. They had hammered Yamamoto for three runs or more in all three games against him. The Padres scored five in three innings in the teams’ NLDS opener.

Hot weather at Dodger Stadium added to hitters’ enthusiasm. So why did the Padres fail to score?

Yamamoto pitched well across five innings. Four Dodgers relievers then brought their best stuff across four hitless innings, all while L.A.’s defense turned in a clean game.

Fernando Tatis Jr. has been known to tell reporters when he thinks Padres hitters had a bad game.

He made no such comments this season when asked to review Game 5. He lauded Yamamoto and relievers Evan Phillips, Alex Vesia, Michael Kopech and Blake Treinen.

“They showed up,” he said. “They had a really good bullpen, really good people coming in. They made really good pitches. That’s the tough part of the game. When we had our opportunity, I feel like we clicked and we took our best chances that day — but they just put it hard on us.”

The late Merv Rettenmund went to seven World Series — four as an outfielder, three as a hitting coach. He knew what choking looked like among hitters, and he didn’t disagree with Padres Hall of Famers Tony Gwynn and Rickey Henderson that in the 1996 playoff opener at St. Louis, some Padres hitters were too tight against Todd Stottlemyre.

Rettenmund was asked if Padres hitters choked in Game 5 last October. He didn’t say that was the case.

The biggest change from Game 1 was Yamamoto’s improvement.

He added 1.5 mph to his fastball and two ticks to his cut fastballs. He didn’t pitch scared, starting the game with three 97 mph fastballs to Luis Arraez.

And he kept Tatis from beating the Dodgers.

Yamamoto took a new approach against the Padres slugger in Game 5. The MLB rookie teased him with his ramped-up fastballs and much-praised splitters and leaned on his slider — a pitch he almost never threw in the regular season.

The results were large: a swinging strikeout of Tatis in the first inning, off the tightest slider by spin Yamamoto had thrown all year; and a double-play grounder with one out in the third, also off a slider.

That nosediving 3-1 offering may have been the most pivotal pitch of the Padres’ 2024 World Series bid.

The Padres had runners on first and second with L.A. ahead 1-0. The pitch must have appeared juicy to a locked-in Tatis. Then it dropped 7 inches more than the slider Yamamoto had thrown two pitches earlier.

Tatis still crushed the outer-third pitch as it dipped below his knees, but the 101.7 mph grounder went to third baseman Max Muncy’s glove side.

“That location where he threw it, it was really good,” Tatis said. “Yamamoto made good pitches. I made good contact, but that’s the beauty of the game.”

The Padres put eight hard-hit balls into play that night, two more than the Dodgers.

The difference was that Kiké Hernández and Teoscar Hernández hit home runs of 428 and 420 feet off Yu Darvish.

Regardless, the notion that Padres hitters were out of character against Yamamoto doesn’t hold up. Manny Machado put good swings on two Yamamoto fastballs, sending each to the right-field warning track. Jake Cronenworth laid into a thigh-high cutter out over the plate. At 371 feet, it was the Padres’ deepest drive of the day.

But Cronenworth shouldn’t be expected to hit that pitch over the wall. A lefty pull hitter, he has no career homers to left-center, per his Statcast spray chart. This one went to the left-center track and into Teoscar Hernández’s glove.

Yamamoto did get away with a fat curveball to Jackson Merrill. This one, on a 2-0 pitch, resulted in a routine flyout to right field.

When the 5-foot-10 righty misplaced consecutive 97 mph fastballs to Kyle Higashioka and Arraez, they hit them for hard singles only for Yamamoto to escape with the double play by Tatis.

The starter finished with his best inning, painting a 98 mph third strike to Xander Bogaerts and breaking Cronenworth’s bat with a 97 mph fastball.

As the Dodgers marched to a World Series title, Yamamoto proved his Game 5 gem wasn’t a fluke. He held the Yankees to one run in 6 1/3 innings of L.A.’s victory in Game 2 of the World Series. The 26-year-old opened the 2025 season by posting a 0.90 ERA through his first six outings.

The Padres didn’t seem fazed by the Game 4 shutout in San Diego and the Game 5 shutout in Dodger Stadium.

But in the category of “what might have been” games by a professional San Diego team, the 2-0 defeat Oct. 11, 2024 stands high on the list.