DETROIT \u2014 When a pitcher is in command, the mound can become a bully pulpit, a place where the best dictate the action, toy with their prey and bend the game to their will.<\/p>\n
When a pitcher is struggling, the mound can feel more like a glass house of sorrow, tens of thousands of people peering in and sneering, mocking your pain.<\/p>\n
These are the extremes of pitching at the highest level in the world. The adrenaline is unmatched when you\u2019re right. There is no hiding when you\u2019re not. Sometimes, trying to decipher the difference between those outcomes and what creates those feelings is not as easy as one might believe.<\/p>\n
Right now, Jack Flaherty is in the latter stage. He has made seven starts this season. In five of them, he has failed to reach the fifth inning. In each of his past three starts, he has not made it to the fourth. Another game unraveled in a blink on Friday night in a 5-4 loss to the Texas Rangers. Flaherty went 3 2\/3 innings. He surrendered four earned runs on five hits and three walks. His season ERA bubbled to 5.90.<\/p>\n
Flaherty is the type who can be terse after games like these. His answers are often short. After one start this year, he repeated a few lines praising his teammates for battling, regardless of the question he was asked. Friday night, it seemed Flaherty\u2019s postgame media session would be another one of those. His answer to the first question, about what he was feeling and searching for, amounted to three words, repeated.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust keep working,\u201d he said. \u201cJust keep working.\u201d<\/p>\n
But by the end, Flaherty\u2019s interview became deeper. It created room for empathy. And it served as a window into the psychological battles fought by those who aspire to throw a round ball over a white plate. It\u2019s an art that can sometimes feel so simple. Other times, it can feel like a riddle with no answer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt happened a couple times last year, where I felt like I kind of lose the zone for three or four hitters in a row, out of the middle of nowhere,\u201d Flaherty said. \u201cToday I was on the attack and really good for the first two innings. And then after the third inning right there, you just lose it for three hitters, and it\u2019s agonizing. It\u2019s frustrating. It pisses you off. I\u2019m losing sleep over it every single day trying to figure out what goes on in that little bit right there.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the record, Flaherty surrendered a run in the first inning. Brandon Nimmo and Josh Jung each recorded hits. The damage might have been worse had Wenceel P\u00e9rez not made a stellar catch at the right-field wall, perhaps robbing Evan Carter of a home run. But as Flaherty explained, he can live with those sorts of innings. He can accept the fact that sometimes he will surrender hits.<\/p>\n
He went one-two-three in the second inning but gave up a leadoff home run to catcher Danny Jansen in the third. Even that one he can reconcile in his mind. He left a slider over the plate. The problem is clear and easy to diagnose.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I\u2019m getting hit around and making mistakes, then it comes down to you threw the ball over the middle, and you can easily dissect that,\u201d Flaherty said. \u201cYou can break that down. \u2018Hey, where were the misses? Middle of the plate. How high? This and that. OK. Great.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
But Flaherty then walked three consecutive batters, losing all feel for the strike zone. He bobbed and weaved and somehow surrendered only two more runs in the inning. But the damage was done, his pitch count was elevated and his team was in a four-run hole.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know if it\u2019s about what\u2019s going right (in the first two innings),\u201d Flaherty said. \u201cIt\u2019s about figuring out what\u2019s going on in those 15-20 pitches.\u201d<\/p>\n
In many of Flaherty\u2019s starts, there have been head-scratching sequences like that. In his first outing against the San Diego Padres, he appeared to be opening up his front side, leading to repeated gloveside misses. But it\u2019s not always simple mechanics getting out of whack.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe it\u2019s a little bit of everything,\u201d Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. \u201cThis is unforeseen and also just not common for him. He doesn\u2019t lose the zone. He\u2019s competitive over the zone.\u201d<\/p>\n
For most of the past two seasons and beyond, Flaherty has encountered difficulty going multiple times through opposing orders. Sometimes the caliber of his stuff deteriorates deeper into outings. Sometimes, hitters adjust and time him up. It\u2019s not fun, but at least it\u2019s logical.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can handle the hits,\u201d Flaherty said. \u201cYou can handle guys putting barrels on the ball if that comes down to missing pitches over the middle. But just giving guys free passes and walking guys, that\u2019s where it gets frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n
At least in Flaherty\u2019s mind, what he\u2019s been dealing with recently is a different kind of confounding. There\u2019s not one clear problem. And that makes the search for solutions all the more difficult.<\/p>\n
He has tried tinkering with the mechanics. He has adjusted his sights from the mound and resorted to all the trusty cues. A pitcher who, when at his best, can dot the bottom of the strike zone, exhaust hitters with count leverage and fool them with spin, Flaherty is currently averaging 7.76 walks per nine innings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever walked guys like that in my career,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those things that is going to be frustrating until we totally figure it out. And then it\u2019s going to be frustrating. It\u2019s not something I really did in spring training. It\u2019s not something I\u2019ve done ever. \u2026 You have a game here and there where that might happen, but for it to continue to happen, I mean, it\u2019s frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n
An MLB.com reporter asked Flaherty on Friday about how difficult this makes his work between starts. How exactly can you account for a 15-20 pitch stretch where things go awry?<\/p>\n
Flaherty bristled at the question at first.<\/p>\n
\u201cHard to work on?\u201d he said. \u201cEverything you do in between starts is working to get better and working on figuring things out and working on this. That\u2019s why it\u2019s a frustrating question.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the team kitchen, Tigers catcher Dillon Dingler watched the feed of Flaherty\u2019s interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just try to get him back in the zone,\u201d Dingler said a few minutes later at his locker. \u201cObviously, you can\u2019t just come inside there to a good-hitting team, so you\u2019re just battling that, trying to find the right (spots) to get back into good counts, and it\u2019s hard. It\u2019s hard, especially if you lose a little bit of feel for certain pitches, too. It\u2019s just something we have to work through.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Tigers, of course, need Flaherty to be better. Tarik Skubal and Framber Valdez are atop the rotation. But the three other spots have quickly been cast into uncertainty. Casey Mize was terrific in four of his first five starts, but is now on the injured list with an adductor strain. Justin Verlander remains on the injured list with a hip issue, working his way back slowly, while Keider Montero has pitched admirably in his place.<\/p>\n
Flaherty, a pitcher who revived his career when he posted a 2.95 ERA for the Tigers before the 2024 trade deadline, has looked less like a legitimate frontline threat and more like an enigma. He is making $20 million this season, so there is no realistic recourse. The Tigers as a team are 16-17, struggling with uncharacteristically poor defense and a thin bullpen.<\/p>\n
For the Tigers to play their best baseball as the season heats up, they need players like Flaherty to find it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got to stay with him,\u201d Hinch said. \u201cWe\u2019re behind him. We\u2019re with him. We know he\u2019s been good before. He\u2019s going to be good for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two minutes and 20 seconds after Flaherty began addressing the query he found frustrating, he was still answering the question, still mining his own thoughts. What might have been an awkward interview turned into a revealing glimpse into the soul of a competitor when things aren\u2019t going right.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s only so many holes you can dig yourself out of,\u201d Flaherty said. \u201cI\u2019m doing a lot of digging deeper and deeper and deeper instead of making pitches early on and trying to get some quick outs and getting ahead of guys and staying ahead. I\u2019m working, and (pitching coach Chris Fetter) is working. Robin (Lund) is working. A.J., Ding, we\u2019ve got everybody in there trying to work at it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand your question. I\u2019m sorry. I\u2019m frustrated. I\u2019ll figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DETROIT \u2014 When a pitcher is in command, the mound can become a bully pulpit, a place where…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,5260,591,85],"class_list":["post-645419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-detroit-tigers","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}