St. Louis Cardinals’ pitcher Jack Flaherty to take on hot hitting Padres
In a year marked by viral outbreak and a season wrangled into submission by necessarily thorough health and safety protocols, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Jack Flaherty frequently found difficulty in his home in following the advice he’s readily doled out to countless fans and social media followers -- “don’t think.”
“You start to realize that there’s no separation from like, being at the field versus being at home,” Flaherty said Thursday, before his team’s 11-9 loss to the San Diego Padres in the second game of the Wild Card series.
“You’re going home and you’re doing your prep work at home while the game’s going on, while you’re watching it, and you don’t get that separation.”
With MLB teams moved into a mobile “bubble” environment for the duration of the postseason, there’s no longer a need to remove pitchers from the park on their off days in order to maximize social distance.
They’re all thoroughly in it together now, for perhaps the first time all season, and the Cardinals will lean on that togetherness as they send Flaherty to the mound in a win-or-go-home Game 3 from Petco Park at 6:08 p.m. (CST) Friday on ESPN.
“Jack is an excellent pitcher,” reliever Giovanny Gallegos said, through translator Antonio Mujica. “He’s a great guy to have going on a game like we have tomorrow, so we’re just gonna show up and we’re gonna win a ballgame.”
“I always think it’s an edge for us when we have Jack Flaherty on the mound,” Adam Wainwright, Thursday’s starter, said after the loss. “That’s what I just told the clubhouse. Hey, tomorrow we’ve got Jack on the mound, he’s gonna bring his A game. He’s gonna go out there and compete, and that’s all we can ask for.”
The path through the 2020 season has been at times as perilous for Flaherty as the footing on the pitcher’s mound which failed him in a jarring tumble during his last start, one week ago.
He allowed more than one third as many earned runs as he did in 2019 -- 22 vs. 60 -- while pitching approximately one fifth as many innings -- 40 ⅓ vs. 196 1/3.
He struggled at times to properly locate his slider, allowing opponents like the Milwaukee Brewers to dismiss the pitch down and out of the zone and wait for fastballs which they could handle. Keenly aware of his importance to their future, the Cardinals handled Flaherty gently following their 17-day outbreak intermission, and the result was a challenging season in which he never truly showed himself.
“Physically you probably feel a little bit better,” Flaherty said. “You’ve thrown 20 innings this year so you probably feel a little bit better from that kind of standpoint. Yeah, it’s been a weird year all throughout.”
Performance dictated placement, and when it came time for Cardinals manager Mike Shildt to set his rotation for the Wild Card series, Flaherty was third behind Kwang Hyun Kim and Wainwright, set to pitch only if necessary.
He is now, indeed, necessary.
“Shoot, let’s hope we win the first two,” Flaherty said, when asked about his reaction to Shildt’s decision.
“My role is to go out and pitch and win games whenever called upon,” he said. “And so for me that’s being called upon in Game 3 … I go out there and compete to win a ballgame. And that’s my job. That’s what I gotta do right now.”
His job on Thursday was one that he was largely forced to eschew during the regular season -- one of cheerleader.
The Cardinals dugout was notable in empty ballparks throughout the season largely for its subdued nature. The wear and tear of a tenacious schedule showed in spirit as well as in play, and the postseason represents the team’s first chance to come together in defiance of that.
The reaction has been strong. Songs and chants as one might hear at a little league game have issued from the dugout in a constant torrent. Even as the Cardinals bullpen surrendered five home runs to an unrelenting Padres offense, the encouragement came. Five runs (three earned) came across against the staff which will also be on center stage Friday, as the bruised Padres pitchers are forced to stage a bullpen start.
“Way better,” was Flaherty’s description of the postseason environment. “Way more fun. Way more chance to enjoy the game, way more chance to be around the guys. You just feel more a part of the team. You can feel the energy. You can feel where guys are at.”
Guys are at the precipice, on both sides of the field. The heavily favored Padres were the National League’s second best team during the regular season and were christened “Slam Diego” for their ability to jump back into any game at any time through their prodigious power.
There is perhaps no pure competitor on the Cardinals more prepared to face such a challenge than Flaherty, and his teammates agree.
“That’s our guy,” second baseman Kolten Wong said. “That’s our hammer. We’re gonna stick by him, man. There’s nobody else here I’d rather have on the mound than Jack.”