Dodgers’ Jack Flaherty on World Series win, first Shohei Ohtani ‘wow’ moment

Jack Flaherty came over from the Detroit Tigers at the MLB trade deadline and helped the Los Angeles Dodgers win their second World Series in five years in a five-game series win over the New York Yankees.

Flaherty stopped by “The Herd” on Friday to discuss how he was embraced by the Dodgers this season.

“I felt like it wasn’t a bunch of, ‘Hey, nice to meet you,'” Flaherty told host Colin Cowherd. “It was a bunch of, ‘Hey, man, good to see you.’ We all knew each other. … They brought me in, embraced me — and I felt like I just seamlessly fit in and was able to go out and have a good start in Oakland, and just go from there.”

Flaherty — who grew up in Burbank, California, which is located roughly 25 minutes from Dodger Stadium — went on to share what suiting up for the Dodgers meant to him on a personal level.

“You feel that any place they go, they’re the bigger, better team,” Flaherty said. “Matt Kemp told me, ‘It’s just different wearing the Dodger blue, and it’s different having ‘Dodgers’ across your chest.’ He said, ‘Guys just come here, and the level of their game just steps up, for whatever reason.’” 

Kemp, a two-time Gold Glover and three-time All-Star, played for the Dodgers from 2006-14, averaging 24 home runs, 83 RBIs and 22 stolen bases per season from 2008-14, while slashing .290/.350/.495.

Flaherty was a first-round draft pick by the St. Louis Cardinals and spent the first five-plus seasons of his MLB career with them (2018-23) before a midseason trade to the Baltimore Orioles in 2023. He then spent the first four months of the 2024 season with the Tigers, before being acquired by the Dodgers in July.

Flaherty posted a combined 3.17 ERA, 1.07 WHIP and 194 strikeouts over 162.0 innings (28 starts) this season. The right-hander was then a mixed bag in the postseason, posting a combined 7.36 ERA in five starts.

Flaherty’s best postseason starts came in Game 1 of both the National League Championship Series against the New York Mets (seven shutout innings) and Game 1 of the World Series against the Yankees (two earned runs over 5 1/3 innings). That said, he struggled in closeout games, surrendering eight earned runs in Game 5 of the NLCS and being removed from the mound in the second inning of Game 5 of the World Series, having surrendered four earned runs.

The 29-year-old has been held back by injuries over his MLB career, having made 30 regular-season starts just once (2019) and dealing with the combination of oblique, shoulder, hand, hip and back injuries.

While stars galore on the Dodgers (e.g. Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts), Shohei Ohtani dazzled the baseball world in a unique manner this season, posting the first 50-50 season (50 home runs, 50 stolen bases) in MLB history.

Flaherty provided the first moment when Ohtani amazed him.

“There was a ball that he hit against Colorado against Kyle Freeland,” Flaherty told Cowherd. “He took a pitch that was up and in, left-on-left, and he hit it out to left-center. And he hit it about 10 rows deep into left-center, which you don’t do as a left-handed hitter at all, and then we all went and watched exactly where the pitch was. Then we saw it was two balls above the zone, and he hit it out, and we were like, ‘That’s not normal.’

“And they had watched him all year and been with him, and everybody was still like, ‘Wow, that was incredible. … He’s as cool, calm and collected as they come.’”

Flaherty is in competition with the likes of left-handers Blake Snell and Max Fried and right-hander Corbin Burnes, among others, to be the No. 1 compensated starting pitcher in free agency this winter. This is the first time that Flaherty has hit the open market.

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