Flaherty leads ‘pitching clinic’ as Dodgers tie mark
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Bradford Doolittle, ESPN Staff Writer
LOS ANGELES — Perfection was in the air for the Los Angeles Dodgers on Sunday. Perfection on the scoreboard, perfection for a hometown player living out a dream and near-perfection for just about everyone throwing a baseball right now for L.A.
In a Game 1 rout replete with history-making zeroes, Jack Flaherty and two relievers combined to shut out the New York Mets 9-0 as the Dodgers seized a series-opening win in the NLCS.
“It was just a pitching clinic,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I thought [Flaherty] did a great job of filling up the strike zone with his complete mix. Used his fastball when he needed to. Just minimized damage.”
With the whitewash, the Dodgers have extended a scoreless innings streak — one that began in Game 3 of the NLDS against the San Diego Padres — to 33 innings, matching the 1966 Baltimore Orioles for the longest in postseason history.
The Dodgers also became just the third team to record three straight shutouts in the postseason, joining those Orioles and the 1905 New York Giants.
Flaherty served up the first seven of those goose eggs in Game 1, holding the Mets to two hits over seven innings and striking out six. It was the longest outing by a Dodgers starter in the postseason since Max Scherzer on Oct. 11, 2021. Los Angeles, an October fixture, had 20 games in between those two gems.
With the Dodgers rotation riddled by injuries, this was the kind of outing the team hoped for and badly needed from Flaherty when it acquired him at the trade deadline from the Detroit Tigers.
“He’s got an aura about him,” Dodgers catcher Will Smith said. “He’s super competitive, super focused. I see all his preparation he does for the couple days before the start. It’s intense.”
The night was, well, perfect for Flaherty, an L.A.-area native who grew up a Dodgers fan and attended many games at Dodger Stadium with his mother, who was on hand Sunday. Flaherty also pitched a shutout to win a state championship at the ballpark in high school in 2013.
In short, it was the kind of night that a child who grows up as a fan of any team dreams of having. Flaherty not only got to live it out, but he did so with family and friends watching from the stands, including buddies he played with in Little League.
“Man, those are the days, those are the best days we had,” Flaherty said. “I still have my buddies I played with, saw a couple of them there in the stands. Just real cool. Real cool having the support of all of them.”
For Flaherty, the evening ended when he stalked off the mound after finishing off the seventh inning to a rousing ovation from a group of fans — of which he used to be one. Intense as he might be, the journey was not lost on Flaherty.
“Walking off the mound, I usually have been able to keep it together no matter what, even if it’s the end of an outing,” Flaherty said. “Yeah, it’s hard not to smile there.”
With Game 2 on the docket for Monday afternoon after a short turnaround, Roberts confirmed that the Dodgers will go with a bullpen contest, running out a series of relievers in hopes of continuing the scoreless streak and heading back to New York with a 2-0 lead. That made Flaherty’s Game 1 performance, particularly the length, that much more crucial.
“I felt good about that,” Roberts said. “Jack being able to do that opens up a lot of things, and also saves some looks [against Mets hitters] from some of our guys in the pen.”
Another allusion to perfection: For a fleeting moment, it was literally true for a Dodgers staff that is dominating at the most important time of the baseball calendar. When Flaherty allowed his first baserunner — a leadoff walk to New York’s Francisco Lindor in the fourth inning — it snapped a streak of 28 straight batters the L.A. staff had retired, going back to Game 5 against San Diego.
The records are coming so fast for the Dodgers that they aren’t even aware when they are happening. The scoreless inning streak was matched thanks to a ninth tossed by rookie Ben Casparius, who had all of three big league appearances under his belt when the playoffs began.
Casparius had no idea he’d been a part of history until he was told after the game, but he seemed to appreciate the significance.
“It’s amazing,” Casparius said. “Especially being a rookie and a guy who kind of got here super late.”
The perfection extended to the Dodgers’ offense, which rolled up nine runs. And for a team that leans heavily on home runs to turn the scoreboard, L.A. did not hit a ball over the fence Sunday. The Dodgers had just one extra-base hit and even laid down a pair of sacrifice bunts.
For the Mets, who were playing in the 100th postseason game in franchise history, it marked their worst-ever playoff loss.
With the outburst, the Dodgers have now scored 23 straight runs since their pitchers last allowed a run, two shy of the postseason record set by Atlanta in 1996. The team Flaherty just joined but rooted for all his life has gotten on a roll.
“This game is fun,” Flaherty said. “This game is a lot of fun. I’ve been lucky to do it since I was a little kid. I’m still lucky to be able to do it today and be put in these positions.”
One ideal night in Chavez Ravine is in the books for the Dodgers. Yet, it still was only one win, a fact not lost on the Dodgers — or the star of that dream come true.
“We’ve got work to do,” Flaherty said. “It’s Game 1. It’s a really good team over there still. We’ll enjoy tonight but we’ve got a quick turnaround tomorrow.”
LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani hit two homers in an 11-5 win over the San Francisco Giants on Saturday night, emphatically ending the three-time MVP’s longest homer drought since joining the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Ohtani led off the bottom of the first with his 24th homer, hammering Landen Roupp‘s fourth pitch 419 feet deep into the right-field bleachers with an exit velocity of 110.3 mph.
The slugger had been in a 10-game homer drought since June 2, going 10-for-40 in that stretch with no RBIs, although he still had an eight-game hitting streak during his power outage.
Ohtani led off the sixth with his 25th homer, sending Tristan Beck‘s breaking ball outside the strike zone into the bleachers in right. He also moved one homer behind the Yankees’ Aaron Judge and Seattle’s Cal Raleigh for the overall major league lead.
Dodgers fans brought him home with a standing ovation as Ohtani produced his third multihomer game of the season and the 22nd of his career.
Ohtani reached base four times and scored three runs in his first four at-bats, drawing two walks to go with his two homers.
Ohtani hadn’t played in 10 straight games without hitting a homer since 2023 in the final 10 games of his six-year tenure with the Los Angeles Angels.
Ohtani had slowed down a bit over the past two weeks after he was named the NL Player of the Month for May with a formidable performance, racking up 15 homers and 28 RBIs.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
BOSTON — Hunter Dobbins had quite the week.
First, he said last weekend that he would rather retire than pitch for the Yankees because his father was drafted by New York twice before being traded.
Then, he went out and beat the Yankees.
A few days after his comments about never wanting to pitch for New York, he had to defend his dad’s story about being drafted by the Yankees in response to a New York Post article that cited multiple official databases and the Yankees’ own records that couldn’t confirm Lance Dobbins ever played with the organization.
On Saturday night, Dobbins (4-1) followed up by going six shutout innings in Boston’s 4-3 victory over New York, his second win over the Yankees in less than a week.
“It’s a lot of fun,” he said. “I’m more worried about just the win column, whether it’s against them or anybody. My job is to try and help this team win as many ballgames as we can, and pitch in meaningful playoff baseball games. That’s what I’m more focused on.”
But he realizes what it means to the fan base in this longtime rivalry, with the Red Sox fans heard chanting about the Yankees outside the park before he spoke in an interview room.
“Yeah, I love being able to perform and get those wins for the fans here,” he said. “They deserve it. It’s a great city, passionate fan base, so being able to get those wins — especially twice in one week — means a lot and looking forward to trying to build on that going forward.”
In his victory over New York last Sunday, Dobbins held the Yankees to three runs over five innings, two on a first-inning homer by Aaron Judge.
On Saturday night, Judge went 0-for-3 against him, striking out twice on curveballs.
“It was just kind of scouting,” Dobbins said of his game plan against New York’s slugger after Garrett Crochet struck him out three times in the series opener Friday.
“Crochet has an electric fastball. I can throw it hard, but the shape isn’t quite as elite,” he said. “So we knew we had better weapons to go at him with, so I felt like we did a good job of kind of keeping a balanced attack throughout the order.”
Dobbins struck out five and gave up only two singles Saturday.
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