Jack Flaherty is good, but Dodgers need great in loss to Orioles

Jack Flaherty has been good for the Dodgers since coming over in a deadline trade last month. He has three wins in five starts. He has a 3.49 earned-run average and 34 strikeouts. And, at a time the club has been without aces Tyler Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, he has provided stability by working into the sixth inning in every outing but one.

“What Jack’s done,” manager Dave Roberts said, “has been everything we had hoped.”

However, as the Dodgers enter the stretch run, Flaherty might be needed to do even more.

Yamamoto is weeks away from returning from his shoulder injury. Glasnow’s timeline is even more concerning as his initially minor elbow injury continues to linger.

If the postseason started tomorrow, Flaherty likely would be the Dodgers’ Game 1 starter.

Which is why, for as solid as he looked in a six-inning, three-run outing against the high-powered Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday night, it wasn’t enough to satisfy his own lofty standards, nor the needs of a short-handed Dodgers team.

Once again, the right-hander was good. But in a 3-2 loss at a sold-out Dodger Stadium, he wasn’t quite good enough to save his new team from defeat.

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“Overall, just two pitches that I'd really like back,” Flaherty said. “Just continuing to find ways to get outs. Gotta get deeper."

Flaherty avoided a worst-case scenario, staying in the game after taking a fifth-inning comebacker from Colton Cowser off his right wrist. Both Flaherty and Roberts believed the pitcher would be fine after the game.

In the at-bat before it, though, Flaherty made one of his two big mistakes, giving up a go-ahead, two-run home run to Baltimore’s No. 9 hitter, Ramón Urías, on a slider that stayed up just enough to catch the bottom of the strike zone.

“I'm not trying to throw it there,” said Flaherty, who dropped to a knee in frustration as Urías' ball sailed out to left field. “Just need to get it more to the outer half and get it down away. In there is where he can handle it and he put a good swing on it. Doesn't always happen. Hitting's hard. But … you want to make a better pitch there."

This has been a common theme of Flaherty’s first month as a Dodger, in which he has slightly regressed from the stellar 2.95 ERA he posted over the first four months with the Detroit Tigers.

None of his starts have been poor, allowing him to accumulate a team-high 28⅓ innings in August. But, aside from six scoreless innings against the lowly Oakland Athletics in his Aug. 3 debut, just about all of them have been a pitch or two away from true dominance.

Flaherty’s other mistake Tuesday: a center-cut, 3-and-1 fastball to Ryan O’Hearn in the second inning, which the Orioles slugger crushed for a solo home run.

“Yeah, there have been a few outings where you’re like ‘Man, I wish we could have that pitch back,’” Roberts acknowledged. “But he’s throwing the ball really well for us.”

Indeed, Flaherty’s performance would have been enough to win — if only the Dodgers’ lineup, which was missing Freddie Freeman so he could rest his broken finger, wasn’t so wasteful with runners in scoring position.

After briefly erasing their 1-0 deficit on a Miguel Rojas sacrifice fly in the bottom of the second and a Teoscar Hernández two-out RBI single in the third, the Dodgers whiffed on three key opportunities late in the game.

Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Hernández came up empty in a two-on, no-out opportunity in the fifth. Betts later was stranded at second after a single and steal in the eighth inning, with both Hernández and Will Smith going down on strikes. Then, with two on and two out in the ninth, Chris Taylor gave one a ride to left but watched it die short of the track to end the game.

“We had some opportunities to score some runs, we didn’t,” Hernández said. “It happens.”

Come October, explosive offensive outbursts are no guarantee, especially for a Dodgers team that has been woeful with clutch hitting the last couple of postseasons. That’s what makes Flaherty so important, and why, if he is to truly be treated like a potential playoff ace, simply being good might not be enough.

And through the first month of his Dodgers tenure, consistent greatness remains elusive.

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Freeman rests finger

For the second time in the last couple of weeks, Freeman was not in the starting lineup, getting a day off to rest the right middle finger he broke a couple of weeks ago on a ground ball that jammed his finger.

After initially getting hurt Aug. 17, then sitting out the next game while awaiting tests to diagnose the injury, Freeman started in each of the Dodgers’ last six contests, resuming his everyday role at first base since doctors said the break — which he noted was nondisplaced — couldn’t be hurt more.

In that time, however, Freeman’s numbers plummeted. The slugger was just three for 23 in his last six games. As a result, his batting average dipped from .292 to .284, which would be a lower mark than he’s had in any season since 2015.

Roberts said the Dodgers didn’t consider putting Freeman on the injured list. But, the manager said there is a “chance” that Freeman could sit another day or two, though he might be available off the bench.

“I just don’t want this thing to linger,” Roberts said. “So if we can get it to calm down, we’ll be in a better spot.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.