Los Angeles – Before Jack Flaherty took the mound Sunday night, he saw his mother sitting behind home plate. In the crowd, a group of his lifelong friends from the Sherman Oaks Little League offered their support.
Entering his second start against his childhood team, he felt comfortable.
Eleven years after the Harvard-Westlake junior pitched seven scoreless innings in the Southern Section Division I championship game at Dodger Stadium, the homegrown product was back on the same mound, doing the same thing, only with very different stakes and circumstances.
Instead of bringing his high school team a championship, Flaherty was planning the most important win of his eight-year major league career with seven frames in the Dodgers’ 9-0 victory to open the National League Championship Series against the Mets.
“I’m sure we’ve all done it and put ourselves in the situation,” Flaherty said. “It’s the same, the same game. You just have to look at it as fun and try not to make a big deal out of it, don’t let your imagination stop you.”
Flaherty’s Game 1 gem put the Dodgers in the driver’s seat of the series, ensuring there would be no letdowns coming out of a spirited series against the rival Padres in which the Dodgers prevented a doubleheader. It also put his team in the record books.
Sunday’s win extended the Dodgers’ streak of 33 consecutive innings pitched, tied with the 1966 Orioles for the most in MLB postseason history.
Most importantly, it allowed manager Dave Roberts to save his arms.
Given their lack of starting pitching options, the Dodgers will need to use bullpen plays at some point. In a seven-game series, that can be especially taxing.
Thanks to Flaherty’s work, the Dodgers can now confidently use their top relievers in the Game 2 bullpen on Monday afternoon. On Tuesday’s off-day, relievers could be reset, with Walker Buehler and Yoshinobu Yamamoto rested well for Games 3 and 4 in New York.
“It’s amazing,” Dodgers Michael Kopech said. “We know that we will be trusted a lot down there in the sticks. We don’t know exactly when or how that will happen, but we know there are games we will have to put together innings. For him to go out there and dominate Game 1, and only use two other arms, there are no words.”
Two years ago, the Dodgers were unfairly denied starting pitching in October. Lost them in 2023. This year, the pitching staff made it work.
In a do-or-die Game 4 in San Diego, eight pitchers put together a shutout. The bullpen was also important in the Game 5 decider, following Yamamoto’s five scoreless innings and four scoreless frames.
But at some point, especially in the seven-game series, the Dodgers needed length from the start. Their finding an important deadline to deliver.
“This is definitely his dream for his children and his family,” said Roberts. “He feels he can handle this market, manage a run in the playoffs, start the playoffs.”
In the hours and days leading up to the trade deadline, the Dodgers would go back and forth with Detroit about Flaherty before moving on to other parties, assuming the Tigers would go a different route. With an hour to go, Detroit returned to the Los Angeles front office. The Dodgers got the top starter they wanted.
At the time, they thought Flaherty would be an addition to their postseason rotation. Instead, with Tyler Glasnow and Gavin Stone out for the year, he’s still important.
Before Flaherty’s masterpiece, the Dodgers hadn’t gotten even six innings from a starting pitcher in their last 20 playoff games. The last one to do it was Max Scherzer in Game 3 of the 2021 NLDS. That year, the Dodgers also staved off elimination against their arch-rivals by winning back-to-back do-or-die games in the NLDS to advance. But they had exhausted all their fighting strength. They followed that up by dropping the first two games of the NLCS to the Braves.
On Sunday, Flaherty’s clean sheet provided a perfect start to the NLCS, fulfilling a childhood dream in the process.
“I’ve usually been able to keep it together no matter what, even if it’s the end of the trip,” Flaherty said.
This time, with 53,503 fans of his favorite children’s group giving him a standing ovation?
“Yeah,” admitted Flaherty, “it’s hard not to smile there.”
If he was trying to stay fit to start his second playoff game against the Dodgers on Sunday, his familiarity with the crowd helped.
Flaherty grew up going to Dodgers games, sitting in the dugout with his mother, Eileen. In 2015, then in football for the Cardinals program, the first rounder returned to Dodger Stadium to see the NLDS with his younger brother. He was there when Chase Utley broke Ruben Tejada’s leg on a hard slide, and he was there the night before, when Jacob deGrom fired seven scoreless innings.
Nine years later, Flaherty introduced the same type of performance.
Max Muncy saw him lead off with two runs in the first inning, bringing home Freddie Freeman’s slide from second base. The first baseman had a smile on his face as he touched home plate with his good foot. A slide would cause problems for his sprained right ankle, and he stopped abruptly, so instead, he ran into the arms of a waiting Mookie Betts to slow him down.
The Dodgers continued to pile on with Shohei Ohtani’s RBI single in the second. They all jumped Kodai Senga, who couldn’t help himself. When they hit three more runs in the fourth inning, it was an uphill battle.
Flaherty thought he tried to do too much the last few times. In front of friends and family, he felt comfortable. His defense was impeccable behind him. The Mets only collected four runners against him and didn’t help themselves when they got a few chances. Their best came in the top of the fifth inning, when they got a two-out single from Flaherty to start the frame off Jesse Winker for a groundout to third.
Flaherty then retired the last eight batters he faced. The Dodgers have now outscored their opponents 23-0 since the Padres scored six runs against them in Game 3 of the NLDS.
“It was just a clinic,” Roberts said.
On Flaherty’s return to the field after his 98 pitches, Ohtani waited to swing his hand from the top of the stairs. Roberts hugged the pitcher. So is one of his childhood idols.
That game Flaherty was in in 2015, when deGrom threw seven shutout innings? He came up with Clayton Kershaw, who scored 11 in the game. Five years later, Kershaw struck out 13 batters in eight scoreless innings in a wild-card game against the Brewers en route to a championship for the Dodgers.
Kershaw’s outing in 2020 was the last time a Dodgers pitcher threw at least seven shutout innings in a playoff game — until Sunday.
“Getting a hug from him afterwards and letting me know it was a really good job is important,” Flaherty said. “Things you can’t fix.”
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the LA Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, raised in Texas, and returned to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner.
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