LOS ANGELES — Jack Flaherty will start for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series opener against the New York Yankees and Gerrit Cole on Friday night at Dodger Stadium in a matchup of area natives.
Flaherty is from nearby Burbank and attended high school at Harvard-Westlake in Los Angeles. Cole is from Tustin in Orange County and pitched at UCLA.
“There’s no bigger stage than this and it’s what we all wanted as kids and the position we wanted to be in,” Flaherty said Tuesday during a Zoom news conference. “It’s just going to be an incredible matchup.”
Flaherty will be cheered by his mother, Eileen, who adopted him days after his birth, as well as other family members and friends.
“They always remind me at the end of the day that it’s never as big of a situation as everybody else is going to make it seem,” the 29-year-old right-hander said.
Right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the $325 million rookie, will start Game 2 on Saturday, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. The Dodgers also plan a bullpen game during the best-of-seven series.
The Yankees tried to obtain Flaherty from the Detroit Tigers ahead of the July trade deadline, but couldn’t agree on prospects. Instead, he went to his hometown team and the stadium where he attended games as a Little League player.
Speaking after the deadline, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman would not directly address a report by The Athletic that the Yankees backed away from a trade over medical concerns.
“There’s more to all that with the deadline that I’ve just have kind of held onto,” Flaherty said. “Things turned out the way that they did and we’re here, we’re with LA. I’m happy for the situation that I’m in.”
Flaherty has started three times in these playoffs with a 7.04 ERA. He dominated in Game 1 of the NL Championship Series against the New York Mets, allowing two hits over seven innings.
Then he struggled in Game 5 of the NLCS, giving up eight earned runs and four walks in three innings as he experienced drops in velocity and spin rate. Afterward, Roberts said the pitcher had been feeling under the weather.
“That’s a lesson to be learned,” Roberts said. “That’s another experienced moment for him that I think can kind of help him in this series. We weathered it. I think he’s healthy now and he’ll spit out a good one on Friday.”
Flaherty re-watched that game and felt it sped up on him.
“I was multiple times one pitch away from getting out of it, where it’s still either 3-1 or 5-1 instead of it getting to 8-1,” he said. “It was right there and if we can control a couple more things than be in a little bit of a better spot.”
Three years ago, Flaherty was in the ballpark at Houston to watch high school teammate Max Fried win the World Series clincher for Atlanta. Now Flaherty will be pitching in a World Series opener.
“It’s an opportunity to go out and set the tone and make some adjustments after the last game that I had,” he said, “and be able to set us up for kind of the rest of the series.”
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