Column: Jack Flaherty gives Dodgers dramatic trade deadline victory
Far away from a field, hours before a game, Andrew Friedman just hammered out the biggest hit of the Dodger season.
Trading for the Detroit Tigers’ Jack Flaherty?
Home run.
Acquiring a local kid who is experiencing a career rebirth, ranking among baseball’s leaders in several key categories, consistent and powerful all season?
Game changer.
Inserting into the rotation a 28-year-old right-hander with a 2.95 ERA and 133 strikeouts with just 19 walks?
Walk-off win.
The Dodgers, needing to shore up their starting rotation, add Jack Flaherty, a Harvard-Westlake product who went 7-5 with a 2.95 ERA this season with the Tigers.
After two years of trade deadline failures, Friedman rediscovered his big swing Tuesday, baseball’s brainiest executive stepping to the plate in the bottom of the ninth of baseball’s trade deadline and pulling off a last-gasp acquisition of Flaherty for two prospects.
This is big. This is really big. This is October big.
Remember when Friedman stole Yu Darvish from the Texas Rangers at the trade deadline in 2017? Remember how Darvish would have probably led the Dodgers to a World Series title later that season if the Astros had not been big fat cheaters?
This feels like that.
Flaherty fills the Dodgers biggest need, the one vacancy that stood between them and legitimate championship hopes, the same empty spot that recently doomed them to consecutive first-round playoff failures.
He’ll be a front-line starting pitcher for an injury-riddled rotation. He’ll be a veteran competitor for an uncertain rotation. He’ll be a perfect fit for an October rotation
Assuming Tyler Glasnow doesn’t get overworked in these final two months and is able to start Game 1 of a playoff series, Flaherty would be an intimidating Game 2 starter in any series ahead of injured Yoshinobu Yamamoto and recovering Clayton Kershaw and young Gavin Stone.
For the rest of the regular season, having worked at least five innings in each of his 18 starts, Flaherty will take pressure off a bullpen that has been worked to exhaustion. Actually, he’ll take pressure off an entire pitching staff that has been struggling.
Clayton Kershaw appeared to be in trouble early in his season debut Thursday following offseason surgery, but he worked his way out of a jam.
Since Yamamoto was injured on June 15, the Dodgers starters have amassed a 4.76 ERA, ranking 20th in baseball during that span. In that same period, the overworked bullpen has racked up a 4.95 ERA, ranking 24th.
The pitching problems have led the Dodgers to a 30-27 record since May 20, this billion-dollar team playing average baseball simply because it didn’t have enough healthy or competent arms.
Flaherty, who already has a large Los Angeles fan base from his days at Harvard-Westlake, should help change that narrative. Revived in Detroit after parts of six seasons in St. Louis and one summer in Baltimore, Flaherty ranks fifth in lowest on-base percentage allowed and fifth in strikeout rate among all qualifying pitchers.
More than anything, Flaherty gives them something they didn’t have the last two years after Friedman failed to adequately fortify the pitching at the deadline.
A resilient rotation. A postseason strength. A World Series dream.
His last-minute acquisition Tuesday saved the Dodgers from another blah trade deadline.
Two earlier trades for two utility men — St. Louis’ Tommy Edman and Tampa Bay’s Amed Rosario — felt like more a bandage than a blockbuster.
“The Dodgers now have Rosario, Edman, Kiké Hernández and Chris Taylor all masquerading as the same person,” texted a source Monday night, and so true.
Edman is a former Gold Glove second baseman who can play all over the diamond like Hernández and Taylor. He is also an average hitter like his two twin teammates — his career .726 OPS is mitigated by a .585 postseason OPS.
One more problem. Edman hasn’t played in a major-league game this year and has yet to play in the field in a game of any sort. He sat out the first months of the season while recovering from wrist surgery, then he stayed off the field after he suffered a sprained ankle in late June.
The Dodgers landed utility man Tommy Edman and relief pitcher Michael Kopech in a three-team trade with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Chicago White Sox.
Meanwhile, the acquisition of Rosario was somewhat bizarre because the Dodgers had already done this once. Rosario was brought here from the Cleveland Guardians at the trade deadline last summer but subsequently didn’t play well enough to make the postseason roster. He signed with Tampa Bay this winter and with a .307 average is having one the best seasons of his eight-year career. So the Dodgers apparently figured, if at first you don’t succeed … just get weird.
Then there was the trade for Chicago White Sox reliever Michael Kopech, which feels like more trouble than it’s worth. That’s just what the Dodgers need, right? Another hard-throwing reliever who can’t find the strike zone?
Friedman finished his work Tuesday by acquiring flashy outfielder Kevin Kiermaier from the Toronto Blue Jays, who will be a nice piece of depth, but he’s not what they needed most.
As in the previous two seasons, they needed a stud starting pitcher.
This time, Friedman didn’t strike out.
This time, Friedman knocked it out of the park
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