Second half solidified St. Louis Cardinals ace Jack Flaherty as one of baseball’s best
Cardinals starting pitcher Jack Flaherty was asked about his beloved Los Angeles Lakers on Sunday afternoon, and he eagerly dissected their chances in comparison to the rival Clippers.
“It’s definitely exciting,” Flaherty said. “It’s a good time in LA.”
It’s a good time in St. Louis, too. Especially if you like to watch good pitching.
Flaherty is perhaps the most exciting California import since Wayne Gretzky and has a chance to be the most impactful Cardinal pitcher of his generation. That’s high praise for a player with only two full years in the major leagues, but given his meteoric rise, the trajectory of his career is pointed in that direction.
“I don’t think it’s about trying to go even higher than what went on,” Flaherty said. “It’s about trying to stay consistent and about kind of how it was in the second half, trying to take the same approach, day in, day out and not try to do too much the next time out. It continues off of that and not trying to do anything more. Try to do anything more and you start trying to create things or make other things happen.”
If the first half of Flaherty’s 2019 season was pedestrian, the second half was beyond reproach.
In 15 regular season starts following the break, he recorded a 0.91 earned run average and held opposing hitters to a .142 batting average. He allowed only five home runs in those 15 starts and moved from developing prospect to unquestioned ace.
“I don’t really know how to quantify (confidence),” Flaherty said. “It’s one of those things, you just kind of get more comfortable the more experience you get, the more times you do it. The more seasons you get.”
His 2019 season was marked perhaps as much by personal tragedy as it was by personal accomplishment. The sudden death of a close friend, Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs, from an opioid overdose left Flaherty seeking signs of his presence and elevating his performance to align with that pursuit.
“(I pitched) right after he passed away,” Flaherty said. “I threw in Seattle, the next day. And then from there it was San Francisco and then the All-Star break, and then from there it kind of took off. So, you could kind of feel and tell that something goes on like that you’ve got somebody looking out for you, watching over you.”
The Seattle start was a struggle, as would be reasonable for anyone to expect under the circumstances. He allowed four earned runs in 4 ⅔ innings pitched, needing 103 pitches to record 14 outs.
He wouldn’t allow four earned runs in a single start for the rest of the season.
He allowed four earned runs total in September.
He allowed one less than that in August.
That explosion of talent solidified Flaherty as one of the league’s premier pitchers, as he finished fourth in the balloting for the National League Cy Young Award. That process also helped him grow as a leader and carve out a space in the organization as first among peers, a 24-year-old phenom with the presence and awareness of a man a decade older.
“It’s weird to kind of think about (being a leader) because those are like my guys,” Flaherty said with a rare sheepishness. “It’s just fun kind of watching everybody come up and do their thing. We’ve had guys come up and it seems like the next guy up. It doesn’t really matter what it is. They just continue to come up and pitch the same way they’ve been doing. It’s just a matter of bringing them in and getting them comfortable.”
There seems to be no one in the Cardinals organization more comfortable — in his preparation, on the mound, in his skin off the field — than Flaherty. His close relationship with Cardinals legend Bob Gibson has taken on the image of a torch being passed, one rare talent to the next.
Others have come between them chronologically. None have come between their connection.
“To be able to have conversations with him, to go pick up the phone and give him a call, and if he doesn’t pick up, I know I’m gonna get a phone call back,” Flaherty said. “That is something that is surreal. It’s crazy to understand and really. It’s just special.”
Flaherty was asked about a wide variety of baseball topics beyond the game on Sunday afternoon. He brushed aside questions about pursuit of a long-term contract and expressed a passion for issues surrounding membership and activity in the players’ union.
“I feel like everybody wants to complain about this or that or one thing or another but nobody wants to like, go and pay attention,” he opined.
The ultimate summation of Jack Flaherty in approach, in passion, in potential is one that he shared from “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.” Was Flaherty satisfied by his fourth place Cy Young finish?
“There’s a great quote from a movie that says, ‘if you ain’t first, you’re last,’” Flaherty grinned. “That’s kinda how I see it.”
That much is abundantly clear.
This story was originally published January 21, 2020 at 10:19 AM with the headline "Second half solidified St. Louis Cardinals ace Jack Flaherty as one of baseball’s best."
