For as bad as the Dodgers’ pitching situation looks here in the final month of the season, there’s a world where it could have been so much worse.
A world where the team failed to execute its buzzer-beater acquisition of Jack Flaherty at the July 30 trade deadline. A world where the Southland-raised right-hander never returned to his hometown team. A world where uncertain post-injury versions of Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow, or an inconsistent post-Tommy John version of Walker Buehler, might have been their only established pitcher in a potential postseason rotation.
A world that, when presented with the hypothetical Sunday morning, manager Dave Roberts had no interest in imagining.
“It,” Roberts said of not having Flaherty, “would not be a good feeling.”
Luckily for Roberts, his team is enjoying a different reality.
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On Sunday, Flaherty further solidified himself as the Dodgers’ top current starter with a scoreless 7⅓-inning gem against the Cleveland Guardians. Thanks to some help from Shohei Ohtani, who hit the third deck in right field at Dodger Stadium with his 46th home run of the year, the Dodgers were victorious, too, taking two of three games this weekend from a fellow first-place club with a 4-0 win.
“He’s added stability, consistency,” Roberts said of Flaherty afterward. “And today it was a pitching clinic.”
It’s worth remembering: The Dodgers were mere minutes away from missing on Flaherty six weeks ago.
After deadline-day trade talks with the Chicago White Sox over Garrett Crochet stalled, general manager Brandon Gomes was on the phone with the Detroit Tigers up until the deadline’s final moments, working a package that barely beat the clock before being finalized.
At the time, Flaherty was viewed as perhaps the best player moved at the deadline.
But now — with the Dodgers missing Yamamoto (who is scheduled to return from a strained rotator cuff Tuesday), Glasnow (who over the weekend threw his first bullpen since going on the IL last month with elbow tendinitis), Clayton Kershaw (who continues to battle a bone spur on his big toe) and Gavin Stone (who remains shut down after going on the IL with shoulder inflammation last Friday) — no move, in hindsight, comes close to matching its importance.
“You have to have a guy you feel can take down 24 or 25 hitters; who, when they…