Jack Flaherty suffers his worst start as a Dodger in blowout loss to Braves

The Dodgers’ pitching situation has become increasingly ugly this weekend after manager Dave Roberts announced Saturday that ace right-hander Tyler Glasnow will likely miss the rest of the season.
But, in back-to-back losses to the Atlanta Braves at Truist Park, the team’s on-field play hasn’t been much better.
“In totality, it’s not clean baseball,” manager Dave Roberts said. “It’s not the baseball I’m used to watching, we’re used to playing.”
On Saturday night, the Dodgers could do little right in a 10-1 defeat that didn’t even feel that close.
Jack Flaherty, who has ascended to a de facto No. 1 role in the rotation since being acquired at the trade deadline, had his worst start in Dodger blue, giving up four runs in an 83-pitch outing that ended after the third.
The Dodgers’ defense didn’t offer much help, with misplays and missed opportunities in the field aiding a three-run rally for the Braves (81-67) in the second and a six-run outburst in the sixth.
And, in a continuation of their recent regression at the plate, the lineup offered little resistance against National League Cy Young favorite Chris Sale, managing just seven hits in what was their seventh game out of the last nine scoring fewer than five runs.
“You know it’s gonna be a tough battle,” outfielder Mookie Betts said of facing Sale, who yielded just one run in six innings. “Just didn’t really apply much pressure on him.”
Flaherty’s struggles were most alarming Saturday for the Dodgers (87-61), especially given his ever-increasing importance as one of only two frontline pitchers currently available for the club (alongside Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who recently returned from a shoulder injury).
Struggling with his command from the start, Flaherty gave up one run in a 27-pitch first inning. He had to work around a two-out double in an 18-pitch second. Then, he got little help behind him in a sloppy 38-pitch third.
Jorge Soler led off the frame with a double to right, hitting a deep fly ball Betts couldn’t catch on the run in right.
“I just missed it, man,” Betts said. “Just went after it and I missed it, misjudged.”
Then, after a walk to Marcell Ozuna, Flaherty dialed up a potential double-play ball that Miguel Rojas booted at shortstop, managing to turn only one out at second base.
That set the stage for the back-breaker. After Jarred Kelenic drew a walk to load the bases, Orlando Arcia found the gap in right-center for a three-run, bases-clearing double.
Having tied the game the previous half-inning, on Betts’ RBI single, the Dodgers were suddenly down 4-1.
“We tie the ball game against Sale, who’s been really, really good all year, and you want to go out and put up a shutdown inning,” Flaherty said. “And I didn’t do that.”
Flaherty finished the third inning — though not before issuing another walk, his season-high fourth of the night — but couldn’t go further, stumbling to his first start of less than five innings all season.
He is 5-2 with a 3.25 ERA in eight starts with the Dodgers.
“Was around the zone, wasn’t really attacking guys, wasn’t doing the little things right,” Flaherty said. “Just move on from this one, move on to the next one as quickly as you can.”
After a pregame switch of Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández in the lineup — with Hernández batting third and Freeman hitting cleanup for his first time as a Dodger —Hernández ended the first inning with a poor baserunning decision, getting thrown out at third while trying to stretch a two-out double into a triple.
“The baserunning changed the momentum a little bit in the first inning,” Roberts said. “So that’s uncharacteristic.”
So too was a high-flying Dodgers offense that never truly got off the ground.
Kiké Hernández scored their lone run in the third after hitting a one-out double. From there, however, the Dodgers didn’t have another inning in which more than four batters came to the plate.
“Sale I thought was good,” Roberts said. “But again, we got behind early.”
Indeed, Saturday included many recent hallmarks for a sliding Dodgers club, which saw its division lead in the NL West over the San Diego Padres trimmed to 3½ games following a sixth loss in the last nine games.
“If you look at the last seven days … it hasn’t been clean baseball,” Roberts said. “Those things that we have to address. We have to be better at those things if we want to be the ballclub that we expect to be.”
Never has that been truer than now, with the Dodgers’ crumbling starting rotation putting the onus on other parts of the roster to help compensate — in order to both cement their postseason position and have any chance of making a deep run once they get there.
“It does suck,” Betts said of the team’s pitching problems and the news of Glasnow’s injury pregame Saturday. “You win a lot of ballgames with pitching. But you’ve also got to hit, got to play defense. It does suck, but that’s no excuse. It’s no excuse. We just haven’t been playing good baseball by any means.”