Jack Flaherty found himself in unfamiliar territory Wednesday. For the first time, the 27-year-old right-hander was a member of a team other than the St. Louis Cardinals. Traded to Baltimore minutes before Tuesday’s deadline, he’s in an Orioles clubhouse featuring only a couple of players he’s interacted with before.
But he’s excited to get to know the rest.
“These guys have been playing unbelievable,” Flaherty said. “For them to be in first place and to be playing the way they have all year, it’s special. Really lucky to come in here and join these guys.”
The American League East-leading Orioles acquired Flaherty on Tuesday for three of their top 20 prospects, adding the pending free agent to their inexperienced rotation as many of its members approach career innings highs. He will make his team debut Thursday as their starter in the finale of their road series with the Toronto Blue Jays.
Flaherty, 27, threw more than 190 innings in 2019, when he finished fourth in National League Cy Young Award voting. This season is the first since then that he’s thrown even 80 innings, but he plans to add plenty to this year’s total of 109 2/3, in which he’s posted a 4.43 ERA.
“I’m looking forward to going deep into October, as far as it goes,” Flaherty said. “Just my job is hopefully going to be to go out, take the ball every fifth day and then execute.”
Flaherty joins Kyle Gibson as the lone members of Baltimore’s current rotation who have thrown at least 150 innings in a season. Gibson is also one of the few Orioles who Flaherty is at all familiar with, with Adam Wainwright, who shared the Cardinals’ rotation with Flaherty and runs the nonprofit Big League Impact with Gibson, putting them in touch.
“When you can bring in a veteran starter that has that kind of track record of getting deep into games, being able to have swing-and-miss stuff, being a guy that has playoff experience — he’s pitched at some of the highest levels, if not the highest level of the game, so I think he can bring a lot,” Gibson said.
Flaherty posted a 3.45 ERA in his final 12 starts with the Cardinals, including a 3.03 mark in five July outings. He credited that improvement to “doing the simple things right,” specifically noting improved fastball command.
The Orioles likewise have shown a knack for helping pitchers improve, with executive vice president and general manager Mike Elias saying after the trade that their approach to game-planning could benefit Flaherty, who had spent the entirety of his career with St. Louis after being drafted 34th overall in 2014 out of California’s Harvard-Westlake High School.
There, he was notably teammates with Los Angeles Angels right-hander Lucas Giolito and Atlanta Braves left-hander Max Fried. Giolito was traded to the Angels from the Chicago White Sox days before Flaherty was moved, and with the Angels playing in Toronto at that time, he served as a resource for Flaherty as he handled the uncertainty leading up and after the trade.
Flaherty was St. Louis’ scheduled starter for Wednesday, so he tried to spend Tuesday focused on preparing for that outing, though his status as a pending free agent on an underperforming Cardinals team meant he understood he was likely to be dealt. St. Louis opened the season with better than two-in-three odds of making the playoffs, according to FanGraphs, with the Orioles given a 1-in-10 chance. By Wednesday evening, the Cardinals, in last place in the NL Central, had below a 1% chance, while Baltimore stood as near-locks at almost 95%.
“It’s exciting to be on a good team. It’s exciting to be on a team that’s in it. There was a lot of promise in St. Louis, and things didn’t work out. Sometimes, that’s just the way it goes, and you can’t really do much about it.
“Now, it’s just about moving forward. I’m excited. These guys have been playing well. I’m excited to play my role.”
To add Flaherty to the active roster, the Orioles optioned right-handed reliever Bryan Baker. Before the move, Baker had spent all of the past two seasons in the majors with Baltimore, including some time spent in a high-leverage role. In his past 24 outings dating mid-May, Baker had a 5.40 ERA and allowed more than half of the runners he inherited to score.
“When you are winning and start getting good players, sometimes you have to make really tough decisions,” manager Brandon Hyde said. “Bake, that’s a tough decision sending him down because he means a lot to our bullpen and means a lot to our team, so that was a really tough decision this afternoon. I don’t think a couple-week reset is bad for anybody right now [with] the amount, the volume these guys have thrown in the last couple of years. I’m hoping that he can just go down there, kind of get a little bit of a reset and hopefully join us back up here soon and throw some big things for us as we go down the stretch.”
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