by Cary Osborne
Jack Flaherty had just fired his 98th pitch of the game in the seventh inning on Sunday in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series, and it landed into the glove of Teoscar Hernández in left field.
To the Dodger starting pitcher’s back was a scoreboard with zeroes in the innings and run columns for the Mets.
Surrounding him were 53,503 mostly Dodger fans, embracing the pitcher in his biggest moment since the Dodgers acquired him from the Detroit Tigers at this season’s trade deadline.
His mother and former teammates from Sherman Oaks Little League were among that group, having long seen how dominant the Burbank native could be on a pitcher’s mound. Now the Dodgers got to see it at the most important time of the season.
Flaherty entered the Dodger dugout to a literal embrace — one from Dodger manager Dave Roberts — who wrapped his arms around the 6-foot-4-inch right-hander and held on tight.
The Dodgers desired this kind of length and outing from a starting pitcher —with Roberts even saying it the day before the NLCS began.
Flaherty delivered with one of the great NLCS Dodger starts ever — seven innings, two hits, two walks, six strikeouts and no runs in the Dodgers’ 9–0 win.
“Walking off the mound I usually have been able to keep it together no matter what, even if it’s the end of an outing,” Flaherty said. “But I had a feeling it was towards the end of the line. Yeah, it’s hard not to smile there.”
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The Dodgers have now tied the 1966 Baltimore Orioles for a postseason record 33 consecutive scoreless innings. Los Angeles came into NLCS Game 1 with 24 scoreless innings — 16 from the bullpen.
The Dodgers needed only two zeroes from the bullpen on Sunday, and it also delivered. And because of Flaherty’s seven innings of excellence, the Dodgers have options and flexibility and therefore will go with a bullpen game in Game 2 on Monday.
Daniel Hudson (20 pitches) and Ben Casparius (13) were the only relievers who entered the game on Sunday. Now they can deploy a barrage of high-leverage arms in Monday’s Game 2 with an off day following on Tuesday.
“Jack being able to do that opens up a lot of things and also saves some looks from some of our guys in the pen for some of their guys,” Roberts said.
Flaherty retired the first nine batters he faced, getting ahead of seven of them with a first-pitch strike. He didn’t allow a hit until Jesse Winker’s leadoff single in the fifth inning, but Winker was deleted after a savvy play by Kiké Hernández in center field caught the Mets designated hitter between bases.
Flaherty induced 43 swings on Sunday and 11 swings and miss.
He induced 40 swings against the Padres in Game 2 of the NLDS and five swings and miss.
“I felt like I had kind of figured some things out the last couple of days, just working through things,” Flaherty said. “I felt like my stuff against San Diego was OK, but even in that game was able to get some outs and put a couple of zeros together. And then was just able to clean some things up in on my delivery and work on a couple of things, work on my stuff.”
Flaherty was fortunate in one sense that the Mets were 1-for-9 against him on hard-hit balls (95-mph-plus exit velocity).
It also helped that he pitched with a lead before he even threw a pitch.
His counterpart, Mets starter Kodai Senga, didn’t have command from the jump and walked three consecutive batters in the first inning. Max Muncy’s two-run single gave the Dodgers a 2–0 lead. Shohei Ohtani knocked Senga out of the game in the second inning with an RBI single.
The Dodgers added three more in the fourth and three more in the eighth with a Mookie Betts three-run double.
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The 9–0 win gave the Dodgers their biggest margin of victory in a postseason shutout in franchise history. It was previously eight in the Dodgers’ 8–0 victory in Game 4 of the NLDS on Wednesday.
This was the second time Flaherty threw seven shutout innings at Dodger Stadium in his career. The last time was May 31, 2013, when he pitched his Harvard-Westlake High to a 1–0 win in the CIF-Southern Section Division I championship.
“Both are cool. Different settings,” Flaherty said of the big games 11 years apart. “But it’s great. I love it. I just want to give our chance a team to win no matter what. I was able to do that today.”
NLCS: Jack Flaherty pitches like an ace for the Dodgers in Game 1 was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.