Detroit Tigers' Jack Flaherty saw team chemistry like this before. Fans may like the results

LAKELAND, Fla. — Jack Flaherty was out of whack.

While throwing his first bullpen on the back fields in Detroit Tigers camp, Flaherty didn’t feel right.

Worse, he couldn’t get right.

“What did you feel?” Tigers pitching coach Chris Fetter asked when Flaherty was done.

Flaherty explained that his throwing motion was out of sync — his arm was moving too fast for his legs.

“He's like, 'well, it's good you can recognize this,'” Flaherty said.

Because recognizing a problem is the first step to fixing it.

But Flaherty didn’t make an adjustment quick enough on the mound.

“Or as quickly as it might need to happen in the game,” Flaherty said.

He would come to realize that he had two options: slow down his lower half or just throw the ball a little bit harder.

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“To catch up with my legs,” Flaherty said.

In the midst of that discussion, there was a bigger point: Flaherty had learned an important lesson. He was learning how to make an adjustment while throwing.

“Now, I will be able to make adjustments, in-game, better than I have in years past,” Flaherty said. “That's what the game is, it's about making adjustments. Not every day is gonna be the same. You're not gonna feel the same every day. But just being able to make those adjustments, I'm in a better spot to be able to do that.”

This is called progress and learning and development.

This is why Flaherty signed with the Tigers for $14 million — to work with Fetter and the rest of the Tigers pitching department.

Now, flash forward to his first action in a game this spring.

Flaherty, 28, was outstanding in his Grapefruit League debut on Monday against the Houston Astros in Lakeland. He threw 10 pitches — nine of them strikes — and was done for the day.

"It's February," manager A.J. Hinch told reporters. "We weren't even going to pitch him this early, and then he felt really good coming into camp, so we wanted to get him an inning. ... Tentatively, his first start was going to be five days from now, so he's ahead of what we originally planned."

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The real force behind Flaherty

To understand Flaherty, to get a glimpse into what makes him tick, you have to start with his mother, Eileen, who adopted Jack when he was 3 weeks old.

Eileen Flaherty, a senior director of corporate finance at NBCUniversal, instilled a strong work ethic in her son.

“From Day 1, nothing was given to you,” Flaherty said. “My mom was always like, ‘school comes first. If those grades start to go down, I’ll take your baseball away from you.’”

She also taught him another lesson: "Just keep going no matter what. It’s not always going to be easy. Things aren't always gonna be great but keep working on it. If you love it and work hard, good things are gonna come from it.”

He went to Harvard-Westlake High School in Los Angeles, a baseball powerhouse that has produced at least 10 MLB players, ranging from former Tiger Brennan Boesch to Red Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito.

“I ended up with a school just by chance honestly,” Flaherty said. “My mom liked the school, first of all, because it was a college prep school.”

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Flaherty was drafted out of high school in the first round of the 2014 MLB draft by the St. Louis Cardinals, then his career took off. He made his MLB debut three years later, was fifth in National League Rookie of the Year voting in 2018 and fourth in NL Cy Young voting in 2019.

Or, as he says humbly and full of nonchalance, “a lot of early success.”

Um, yeah, you could say that.

But his career stalled because of an oblique injury in 2021.

Following Lorenzen's path

While the Tigers were courting Flaherty during free agency, Flaherty had a Zoom call with Fetter and Tigers assistant pitching coach Robin Lund.

“I had heard that Fetter was good,” Flaherty said. “But I didn't have any real prior knowledge of it, going into the process.”

As luck would have it, Flaherty had the same agent as Michael Lorenzen, who is a tremendous success story for the Tigers pitching department. The coaches got Lorenzen back on track, he became an All-Star and they were able to flip him before last season's trade deadline.

“He really liked it with the Tigers and was able to make adjustments as needed and was an All-Star,” Flaherty said. “He's like, 'I think you can do the same things.'”

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During that Zoom call, the Tigers pitching coaches explained what they saw in Flaherty, what they would wanted to work with him.

Here’s the crazy part: they identified exactly what Flaherty was working on. He was just going off his gut instincts, and the Zoom call was confirmation that he was on the right track.

It wasn’t one pitch.

It was changing how his body moved.

“For me, it was like they're seeing the same things that I have felt without even talking to me,” Flaherty said. “That feels like a pretty good spot to be.”

A familiar vibe

There’s something else that Flaherty likes about this Tigers team.

It’s the team defense, especially after the Tigers signed Gio Urshela, who has received Gold Glove votes.

“It's what you want,” Flaherty said. “When you got Javy Báez at short, and Gio wherever he's gonna be at, and Tork (Spencer Torkelson) is working his butt off at first; and you’ve got the guys in the outfield, like Parker (Meadows) running around, catching everything — that’s what you want.

“When you play in the park like we do, it gives you confidence that somebody's gonna be there as long as I make a good pitch.”

When he looks at this young Tigers team — how the players interact in the clubhouse — it reminds him of the St. Louis Cardinals, a team that made the playoffs in 2019 and 2020.

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“It kind of reminds me of when I first came up in St. Louis — we all came up together,” he said. “You can see how close everybody is and just the way everybody interacts and gets along. It's very similar.”

Yes, the Tigers would take that.

A run to the playoffs with Flaherty on the mound — the version of this pitcher who got Cy Young votes. Yes, they would take that.

Contact Jeff Seidel at jseidel@freepress.com or follow him @seideljeff.

To read Seidel's recent columns, go to freep.com/sports/jeff-seidel.

Next up: Red Sox

Matchup: Tigers (3-2) at Boston (3-2), Grapefruit League exhibition.

First pitch: 1:05 p.m. Thursday; JetBlue Park, Fort Myers, Florida.

TV/radio: None.

Probable pitchers: Tigers — RHP Reese Olson (5-7, 3.99 ERA in 2023); Red Sox — RHP Garrett Whitlock (5-5, 5.15 ERA in 2023).

Opening Day: At Chicago White Sox; 4:10 p.m. March 28; Bally Sports Detroit.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Why Jack Flaherty is jacked up about development with Detroit Tigers