Like race car drivers and opera singers, pitchers need to summon another gear in pivotal moments. It is how Jack Flaherty in 2019, at just 23 years old, joined Clayton Kershaw and Roger Clemens as the youngest pitchers in the past 48 years with a league-leading WHIP under 1.00. Averaging 93.8 mph with his heater, Flaherty, then with the St. Louis Cardinals, could hit 97 when he floored it.
The complement of two sharp breaking balls also made him the best young pitcher in the game. Riches and awards were to follow as surely as they did for Kershaw and Clemens.
His ascension never happened. The pandemic and injuries, especially to his oblique and shoulder, cast him into such a four-year wilderness of mediocrity (4.42 ERA) that when he hit free agency last winter at the prime age of 28, he could do no better than a one-year, $14 million prove-it flier with the Detroit Tigers.
