Dodgers can’t overcome Jack Flaherty’s struggles in NLCS Game 5 loss to Mets

Before the sun had set in Queens on Friday night, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts faced a dilemma.

It was the third inning of Game 5 of the National League Championship Series. His club was facing an early but hardly insurmountable two-run deficit. And with pitcher Jack Flaherty lacking both command and velocity, Roberts had three fraught options before him.

1. Stick with Flaherty and hope he could settle down.

2. Summon a lower-leverage arm like Brent Honeywell or Landon Knack and hope they could hold the deficit.

3. Turn to a high-leverage reliever and risk wasting a valuable arm with a likely bullpen game looming in Game 6.

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When a team lacks reliable starting pitching in the playoffs, such can be the unfavorable choices a manager is left with.

“It’s not always fun when you’re going through it,” Roberts said. “Certainly from anyone’s chair. Certainly my chair.”

Just like in the Dodgers’ Game 2 loss, Roberts opted for the conservative path. He left Flaherty in the game, then watched in horror at what unfolded.

In a six-batter sequence, the Mets exploded for a five-run rally, opening up a seven-run lead en route to a 12-6 win.

“All I have to do is be average,” a frustrated Flaherty said afterward, “and we’re in this game.”

On a night the Dodgers could have ended the NLCS and booked a place in next week’s World Series, they let this best-of-seven head back to Los Angeles.

The Dodgers still have the inside track to reach the World Series. They lead this series 3-2, needing just one more victory with two tries at home to get it.

However, plastic tarps that had been taped to the ceiling of the visiting clubhouse at Citi Field remained rolled up. The Dodgers came and went without them being unfurled in celebration.

What was clear from the start Friday was Flaherty’s lack of stuff. In a three-run first inning, his fastball was sitting around 91 mph, well below his 93.3 season average. His command wasn’t there either, leading to two walks in an inning punctuated by Pete Alonso’s three-run homer, his first of the series.

“He wasn’t sharp, clearly,” Roberts said, noting Flaherty has been “under the weather a little bit;” not the only one in a sniffly Dodgers clubhouse.

“I feel like it was the first time in a while I let the game speed up on me a little bit,” Flaherty added. “I didn’t make the adjustments that I should have made in the game after the first inning, when they put a couple good swings on me.”

Flaherty got through the second inning unscathed, despite a leadoff double from Francisco Alvarez and two near-homers from Francisco Lindor (one went just foul, the other died at the warning track). The Dodgers, meanwhile, got one run back against Mets left-hander David Peterson, making the score 3-1 entering the third.

Thus, Roberts faced his fateful decision.

Ever since the Dodgers acquired Flaherty at the trade deadline, the veteran right-hander has been their de facto ace — or, at least, by default.

It’s not what the Dodgers envisioned at the start of this season, back when they thought Tyler Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto could carry their rotation. But it’s the position they find themselves in as Glasnow suffered a season-ending elbow injury and Yamamoto, who entered the playoffs only weeks removed from a three-month shoulder injury, is unlikely to pitch again in this series after starting Game 4.

And with Roberts noting he had only “five leverage innings” from the core of his bullpen, he decided to roll the dice and try to get Flaherty deeper into the game.

“You have to kind of remain steadfast in how you use your pitchers,” Roberts said. “Because ultimately it’s about winning four games in a seven-game series.”

Flaherty began the third inning with two quick strikes on Alonso but then missed the zone four straight times for a leadoff walk. Four more consecutive balls to Jesse Winker put another runner on base and brought pitching coach Mark Prior out of the dugout.

In the bullpen, left-hander Anthony Banda began to get warm. Before the Dodgers could get to him, however, the inning spiraled out of control.

Starling Marte lined a double down the line to drive home two runs. Alvarez, Lindor and Brandon Nimmo recorded three more RBIs on two-out hits.

In the midst of it all, Banda sat back down. Rather than get aggressive with his all-important bullpen — which will play a critical role in the rest of this series — Roberts felt he had no choice but to let Flaherty wear it.

“At 5-1, I’m not going to deploy our leverage guys,” Roberts said, “knowing there’s a cost on the back end and appreciating the fact that there’s still more baseball to play in the series.”

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The Dodgers didn’t roll over. Andy Pages hit home runs in the fourth (a solo shot) and fifth (a three-run blast) to keep the Dodgers within striking distance. Mookie Betts then went deep in the sixth, making the score 10-6.

But the Dodgers squandered other chances along the way, most notably a bases-loaded, inning-ending strikeout in the fourth inning from Freddie Freeman, part of an 0-for-5 performance that might cause Roberts to reconsider his place in the lineup for Game 6 as he remains limited by a sprained ankle.

And any traction the Dodgers did gain was negated by Honeywell, who saved the rest of the bullpen with 4⅔ valiant innings but gave up four comeback-quelling insurance runs.

“We can’t go cry, it is what it is,” Betts said. “Got to turn the page and get ready for the next one.”

That means not only preparing for a likely bullpen game in Game 6, but also cleaning up some of the troubling miscues that plagued the Dodgers on Friday.

Shohei Ohtani had a “brain cramp” on the bases in the first inning, as Roberts told the Fox broadcast, failing to score from third on a groundball from Teoscar Hernández.

Betts looked uncharacteristically shaky in right field, including a bobbled ball that allowed Alvarez to score all the way from first on a Lindor double-turned-triple.

The lineup also went just one for seven with runners in scoring position, a stark change from the .329 batting average the Dodgers had in such spots this postseason at the start of the night.

The Mets, meanwhile, played their best game of the series, racking up 14 hits without a strikeout.

“They did better today,” said Hernández, who has seven walks this series but zero hits in 18 at-bats. “That’s how the game is. You have to keep going.”

The Dodgers still spoke confidently about their position in the postgame clubhouse.

When Max Muncy was asked if, at the start of the season, he would have taken having Games 6 and 7 of an NLCS at home, he answered, “Uh, yeah. Absolutely.”

Yet the opportunity to end the series sooner evaporated in Friday’s five-run third inning — with Roberts electing to save his bullpen rather than chase a low-likelihood, come-from-behind win.

“It’s tough,” Roberts said. “But if you can kind of think through the game as I do … I think those are bets that I’ve got to make.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.