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While procrastinators look to wrap up their holiday shopping on last-minute deals, the Tigers have seemingly rounded out their rotation with a potential bounceback candidate. Detroit reached an agreement with former Cardinal and Oriole Jack Flaherty on a one-year contract worth $14 million, a source told MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand.
The Tigers have not confirmed the deal, which is pending a physical. ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported the agreement.
It’s the kind of signing that Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris has found value in during his years doing deals in San Francisco and Detroit. A 28-year-old right-hander, Flaherty was one of baseball’s bright young starters in St. Louis not long ago, finishing fourth in National League Cy Young voting in 2019 before posting two quality starts to help the Cardinals upset the Braves in the NL Division Series.
Flaherty was the Cardinals’ Opening Day starter in 2020 and ’21, going 9-2 with a 3.22 ERA in the latter season. An oblique strain denied him a likely All-Star selection that year, but a shoulder injury the following season proved to be a greater interruption to his career rise. He made just nine appearances in 2022 before opening this past season in the Cardinals rotation.
Flaherty’s campaign was an inconsistent mix of strong starts and struggling slogs, with more of the latter as the season went on. He gave up 10 runs in just 2 1/3 innings on May 4 against the Angels, then tossed seven scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts against Milwaukee 11 days later.
Flaherty was 7-6 with a 4.43 ERA in 20 starts for the Cardinals before being traded to the Orioles at the Aug. 1 Deadline. He threw six innings of one-run ball with eight strikeouts in his O’s debut on Aug. 3, but struggled the rest of the way, eventually closing the season in Baltimore’s bullpen.
For the season, Flaherty went 8-9 with a 4.99 ERA in 27 starts and two relief appearances. He struck out 148 batters over 144 1/3 innings, good for a 9.2 K/9 ratio, but also walked 66. His 10.1 hits per nine innings marked the highest ratio of his career.
Flaherty’s average fastball velocity of 93.1 mph was down a half-mile from his 2021 average and 1.2 mph from his 2019 form, according to Statcast. The bigger concern was a slider that didn’t have the same effectiveness; the whiff rate on the pitch dropped from 40.5 percent in 2021 to 35.4 percent in 2022, then just 26.5 this past season. Opposing hitters average 89.9 mph of exit velocity when they hit it, a velo higher than they hit his fastball.
The Tigers have assembled a system of pitching instruction over the last few years, led by pitching coach Chris Fetter and assistants Juan Nieves and Robin Lund, with the goal of helping young hurlers on their way up and veteran pitchers looking for a way back. The setup worked last season for Michael Lorenzen, who signed a one-year deal, became an All-Star for the first time in his career, then was dealt to the Phillies at the Trade Deadline for infield prospect Hao-Yu Lee.
Flaherty joins a Tigers rotation that added 36-year-old veteran Kenta Maeda on a two-year deal a couple of weeks ago, and boasts a young core led by Tarik Skubal. But with former No. 1 overall pick Casey Mize returning from Tommy John surgery, former first-rounder Matt Manning coming off just 15 starts in a season shortened by foot injuries, and Reese Olson coming off a career-high 119 2/3 innings in his rookie season between Detroit and Triple-A Toledo, Harris made no secret of his search for another starter.
“We’re always going to be looking for pitching,” Harris said Tuesday after announcing a one-year deal with lefty reliever Andrew Chafin. “I just never feel like we have enough pitching, and I’m always going to be looking.”
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