by Cary Osborne
Jack Flaherty has a support team away from baseball — family and friends who help balance him or get his mind off of baseball so that he can recalibrate and handle the rigors of starting a Major League game. In this case — a Major League postseason game.
Flaherty started Game 5 of the National League Championship Series in New York with the opportunity to help lead his team to the World Series.
But through three innings, his fastballs missed the strikezone. His sliders caught too much of the plate. He was also under the weather. And after three innings, he was out of the game with his Dodgers trailing 8–1.
The support team gave him a breath — not wanting to be too intrusive during a difficult time.
“They gave me the day,” Flaherty said. “Because they know that I don’t really want to talk, and I won’t have anything nice to say to them on that night.”
The phone calls started on Saturday, and the conversations shifted to college football Saturday and NFL Sunday. It was a distraction that Flaherty appreciated.
“It’s just normal life. Baseball’s everything and baseball’s the most important thing,” Flaherty said. “Those are my best friends and my family. But we (had) some good football to watch (last) weekend, and that helped me move forward a little bit.”
With the fog lifted from a difficult Game 5 of the NLCS and the Dodgers winning the series in six games, the next focus for Flaherty was getting right as a pitcher for his next start.
He will start Game 1 of the World Series for the Dodgers on Friday feeling he has achieved that.
He dug into NLCS Game 5. It helped him understand why his fastball velocity was down 2 mph from the regular season and why that group of pitches landed 14 strikes out of the 30.
“It’s usually just timing,” he said. “And I think going throughout this year, I’ve had some starts go like that, where it’s kind of up and down. I was able to make corrections going to the next one, maybe not right in that moment, because it just sometimes it just comes down to timing and the way things are in sync. On some of those fastballs, you start pushing the ball, or your arm gets kind of lost in space and you don’t get the same drive behind it. And for me, my lower half gets off a little bit, and at a certain point when you get into games like that and you don’t feel quite in sync you just got to compete and give everything you got no matter what your stuff is.”
Flaherty’s last start of the regular season was similar in some respects to his NLCS Game 5 start.
His fastball velocity was down a few ticks on Sept. 25 against the San Diego Padres, and he threw 42 fastballs with 21 finding the strikezone and producing one swing-and-miss. He allowed seven baserunners and three runs over five innings. The difference from his NLCS Game 5 start was his ability to limit damage by commanding his curveball and getting big outs with it in the first three innings.
Two weeks later on Oct. 13, his fastball command was back, he was getting ahead with first-pitch strikes and the swing-and-miss picked up. He threw seven shutout innings in Game 1 of the NLCS in the Dodgers’ 9–0 win. It was one of the greatest starts ever by a Dodger in an NLCS.
Flaherty re-watched his NLCS Game 5 and dissected his pitch selection. He felt the game sped up on him — particularly in the Mets’ five-run fifth inning. There are a few pitches he would have liked to have back, and he knows which ones they are.
“You don’t have to reinvent everything. It’s just figuring out what those small adjustments are, and what they might be,” Flaherty said. “These couple days off to dive into some things and look at it have been good.”
So has spending time with friends and family, he said.
“When you sit down with your close group and it just feels like a regular day and it feels like you’re 15 years old again sitting with them and talking and things haven’t changed, it just kind of puts things into perspective,” Flaherty said.
His manager is confident that he’s right for World Series Game 1.
“That (last game’s) another experience moment for him that I think that can kind of help him in this series right now,” said manager Dave Roberts. “So I think that we got through it. We weathered it. No pun intended. I think he’s healthy now, and he’ll spit out a good one on Friday.”
World Series: Jack Flaherty recalibrates and is ready to take on Game 1 was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.