Friday night was Jack Flaherty’s second game since getting acquired by the Dodgers at the trade deadline, and his first for the team at Dodger Stadium, the ballpark he used to attend as a kid in Los Angeles.
He struck out 10 in his home debut with the Dodgers.
Flaherty’s mom Eileen talked to Fabian Ardaya at The Athletic:
“Somebody had sent me an email a couple days ago and said, ‘How can you not be romantic about baseball?’” Eileen said. “Like the romance of the fact that this kid that went to his first game at 6 months old, and pretty much like 28 years later, is actually stepping on the mound as a Dodger. How do you not get a tiny bit emotional and romantic about that?”
Jack Harris at the Los Angeles Times looked back at the 2013 CIF Southern Section Division I championship game at Dodger Stadium, in which Flaherty pitched a shutout for harvard-Westlake and drove in the game’s only run.
“We obviously wanted to play for a CIF Championship,” Flaherty told Harris earlier this week. “But we knew, with that, came being able to play here, which was just an unforgettable experience.”
Cavan Biggio cleared waivers and was released by the Dodgers on Thursday, officially ending his time with the team. Biggio was designated for assignment on Monday when Freddie Freeman returned from the injured list.
The Dodgers acquired Biggio and cash considerations from the Blue Jays for minor league right-hander Braydon Fisher on June 12. He started 13 games at third base and eight games at first base for the Dodgers, and also dabbled in right field (4⅔ innings) and second base (one batter).
Biggio, 29, hit .192/.306/.329 with a 87 wRC+ in 30 games with the Dodgers, which is right in line with his .200/.323/.291, 85-wRC+ line in 44 games for Toronto. He had a 95 wRC+ against right-handed pitchers with Los Angeles.
Had a team claimed Biggio on waivers, they would have assumed the roughly $1.2 million remaining of his $4.21 million salary. Now, any team can sign him for the major league minimum of $740,000, which would be about $202,903 if he signs somewhere on Saturday, for instance.
Geoff Pontes at Baseball America wrote about 10 hitting prospects with standout data this season, and three of them are Dodgers. The usual suspects — Dalton Rushing, Josue De Paula — are included, but also listed is Arnaldo Lantigua, 18-year-old Dominican outfielder signed by the Dodgers for $700,000 in January 2023 who hit .288/.421/.584 with 10 home runs in 39 games this season in the Dominican Summer League.
Said Pontes:
Lantigua has combined a lower zone-miss rate with an average chase rate and strong power metrics. While DSL numbers can be taken with a grain of salt, Lantigua has some standout all-around production. He is showing both exit velocity and expected numbers on contact well above the league averages for age and level.
Marc Normandin at Baseball Prospectus wondered why Major League Baseball hasn’t stepped in regarding John Fisher’s suboptimal handling of the A’s feeling to Las Vegas (by way of Sacramento). Normandin used two examples of former owners, including the disgraced Frank McCourt, who dragged the Dodgers into bankruptcy, a threshold Fisher hasn’t yet reached:
The Wilpons’ whole deal was embarrassing. The Mets were maybe not what they should have been during their post-Madoff stretch. And yet… nothing McCourtian occurred in New York, so they were not pushed out, but instead given time to prove they could still do the job. McCourt was a special case who was dragging a crown jewel franchise down, who exhibited the kinds of behaviors that, in the years since, have made MLB’s owners a lot more careful and discerning about who they allow to enter into their club. Sure, Steve Cohen spends enough that there’s a new luxury tax threshold penalty nicknamed after him, but at least they know he’s good for the bill.