Dodgers’ Jack Flaherty Beats The Heat in Unbelievable Effort vs Guardians

The Dodgers figured Jack Flaherty would feel right at home when they acquired him from the Detroit Tigers on July 30. They weren’t necessarily expecting a 103-degree temperature at first pitch at home, something that had never happened in a regular season game at Dodger Stadium before Sunday.

Perhaps it figures that a Los Angeles native would be up to the task of pitching in extreme heat.

Flaherty pitched into the eighth inning for the first time in seven starts since the trade — a godsend for a team that used a bullpen game to beat the Guardians the day before. He allowed only four hits and did not walk a batter for 7.1 shutout innings.

Flaherty was effectively a three-pitch pitcher Sunday. He led with his four-seamer, which topped out at 95.4 mph, and elicited only three swings and misses among 46 pitches. But the pitch yielded very little hard contact among the nine balls the Guardians put in play against the fastball.

Otherwise, Flaherty relied on his slider (22 pitches) and curveball (20) — each of which yielded no hard contact.

Flaherty lowered his ERA for the season to 2.86, 2.61 since joining the Dodgers. Sunday’s performance further cemented his place as the favorite to start Game 1 of a potential postseason series, particularly if the injury questions that have followed Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow this summer persist.

If Flaherty’s durability was a question after logging highs of six innings and 110 pitches in his first six starts after the trade, he answered that in an efficient, 92-pitch outing.

That Flaherty dominated Cleveland is more impressive given that he was facing a lineup with seven left-handed hitters — including switch-hitters Brayan Rocchio and Jose Ramirez. Of his 92 pitches Sunday, 71 were to opposite-handed batters.

As Eno Sarris wrote recently for The Athletic, emphasizing the curveball against lefties has been a key point of emphasis for Flaherty since the trade. He threw the curveball twice as often to lefties as he did to righties Sunday. Writes Sarris:

The Dodgers got a pitcher in the midst of a great season and still felt the same, as they upped his curve usage nearly 10 percentage points to keep him successful. While his numbers with the Dodgers are a little bit worse than they were with the Detroit Tigers, this change might have been smart. They’ve upped the curve usage against lefties in LA.

This could’ve been the right move because the slugging percentage by lefties against Flaherty’s slider has been rising, up to .406 before he changed teams. Of course, he made the switch and lefties are now slugging close to .700 against the slider this month. Never mind, it’s the .111 lefty slugging against the curve that matters, since he’s gone to that pitch more often in those situations.

— via Eno Sarris, The Athletic

Home runs by Shohei Ohtani and Max Muncy gave Flaherty a 4-0 cushion, leaving him in line for the victory.

Photo Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

Have you subscribed to our YouTube Channel yet? Subscribe and hit that notification bell to stay up to date on all the latest Dodgers news, rumors, interviews, live streams, and more!