Dodgers' hitters give Jack Flaherty a big boost and seal a win over the Pirates

The standing ovation that Jack Flaherty received from a Dodger Stadium crowd of 48,664 when he departed in the sixth inning of Friday night’s 9-5 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates didn’t seem commensurate with his performance in his first home start for his hometown team.

Flaherty, the 28-year-old right-hander who was acquired from the Detroit Tigers with minutes to spare before the July 30 trade deadline, was tagged for four earned runs and nine hits in 5 ⅔ innings and needed just about every one of his 10 strikeouts to navigate heavy traffic on the basepaths throughout his 110-pitch effort.

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But the crowd reaction was as much a welcome-home-and-we’re-glad-you’re here message to Flaherty, a Burbank native who began going to Dodgers games with his mother, Eileen, when he was an infant and pitched Harvard-Westlake High School to the Southern Section Division I championship on this very mound in 2013.

“Yeah, it wasn’t my best start, but it was my first one here, and … I don’t know if I was expecting it, but it was special,” Flaherty said of the ovation. “I enjoyed every second of it. This fan base is as dedicated and as loyal as they come. It’s a lot of fun.”

Flaherty wasn’t nearly as sharp as he was in his Dodgers debut, when he gave up five hits with seven strikeouts and one walk in six scoreless innings of a 10-0 win at Oakland on Aug. 3. He was handed a six-run lead through three innings and nearly made a game of it by giving up a solo homer in the fourth and a three-run shot in the fifth.

But Flaherty kept the Pirates at arm’s length by making several big pitches with runners on base, pitching around Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s leadoff double in the first inning, Michael Taylor’s one-out double in the third, and striking out Yasmani Grandal with a 95-mph fastball with two on to end the fourth.

“One thing I’ve learned so far about Jack is that a situation, a moment, isn't going to be too big for him,” manager Dave Roberts said. “He has the ability to make pitches when he needs to, and that's huge.”

Flaherty’s second win in as many starts with the Dodgers helped his new team retain National League West leads of 2 ½ games over San Diego and 3 ½ games over Arizona. After running away with the division title in 2022 and 2023, the Dodgers appear headed for a dogfight with the Padres and Diamondbacks.

“We're very aware of it,” Roberts said of the tightening division race. “I'd be lying if I said that no one's watching the scoreboard and appreciating how good the rest of the teams in our division are playing, so that just puts the onus on us to play good baseball. We have to take care of business and win baseball games.”

That task is easier when the offense smacks the ball around the yard like it did Friday night, when Freddie Freeman lined a solo homer to right in the first and Shohei Ohtani keyed a five-run third with his NL-leading 35th homer, a two-run shot that sounded like a cannon blast, leaving his bat at 113.9 mph and traveling 448 feet to center field.

“Honestly, the way the ball comes off [his bat], I've never seen anything like it,” Roberts said. “I haven't seen [Giancarlo] Stanton a lot, but I played with Barry Bonds, and the ball just didn't come off like it does on Shohei's bat. And Barry might be the greatest hitter of all time.”

Teoscar Hernández followed Ohtani’s homer with a walk and took third on Freeman’s double to left-center. Will Smith, mired in a three-for-44 slump (.068), dunked a check-swing, two-run single to right, took second on a wild pitch and scored on Miguel Rojas’ single to center for a 6-0 lead.

The Pirates cut the deficit to 6-1 in the fourth on Oneil Cruz’s leadoff homer to right, his 18th of the season. The Dodgers pushed the lead to 7-1 in the bottom of the fourth when Jason Heyward doubled to right-center and scored on Hernández’s two-out single to right, the 30th two-out RBI of the season for the outfielder.

Flaherty looked like he might escape another jam in the top of the fifth when, after one-out singles by Kiner-Falefa and Bryan Reynolds, he struck out Cruz with a 78-mph knuckle-curve for the second out.

But he hung an 85-mph slider over the heart of the plate to Joey Bart, who drove a three-run homer to left-center — his 10th of the season — to pull Pittsburgh to within 7-4.

“They hit some tough pitches, but leaving that slider over the middle of the plate to Bart … he did what he was supposed to do with it,” Flaherty said. “I wanted to get through that sixth and be a little more efficient, but to do that, I have to be a little bit better in the fourth and fifth.”

The Dodgers tacked on in the bottom of the fifth when Kiké Hernández — on his 11th pitch from right-hander Domingo German — sent a two-out laser over the head of the left fielder, Reynolds, who leaped on the warning track and got the tip of his glove on the ball, only to knock the ball over the wall for a two-run homer and a 9-4 Dodgers lead.

Anthony Banda replaced Flaherty and struck out Kiner-Falefa to end the fifth, and the left-hander struck out two in a scoreless seventh, Evan Phillips retired the side in order with two strikeouts in the eighth, and Daniel Hudson gave up a run in the ninth.

“It was Jack’s first time pitching at home, and you just want to give him some breathing room and as many runs of support as possible,” Freeman said. “He gave us 5 ⅔ strong innings, and the offense did a good job tonight of keeping it going, one through nine.”

Short hops

Third baseman Max Muncy, out since May 16 because of an oblique strain, and newly acquired utility man Tommy Edman, who is recovering from an ankle injury, will begin minor league rehabilitation assignments with triple-A Oklahoma City on Saturday. Roberts said both could be activated “in about a week,” and that Edman will get most of his playing time in center field. … Right-hander Walker Buehler, who gave up one run and one hit in 5 ⅓ innings, striking out five and walking three, for Oklahoma City on Thursday night probably will return to the rotation next Thursday in Milwaukee.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.