OAKLAND, Calif. — Jack Flaherty pitched six sharp innings in his Dodgers debut and Los Angeles snapped a three-game losing streak by defeating the Oakland Athletics 10-0 on Saturday night.
Shohei Ohtani stole three bases for Los Angeles to give him 31 on the season to go with his 33 homers. This is just the fourth time a Dodgers player reached the 30-30 club in a season and only three players in the majors doing it faster than Ohtani, who accomplished it in the 111th game of the season. Eric Davis was the fastest to do it in 1987 when he reached it in Cincinnati’s 105th game.
Flaherty (8-5) had the biggest night in his first game since being acquired on Tuesday in a deadline deal from Detroit. He paid immediate dividends for a struggling Dodgers team that had lost five of six games before he took the mound in Oakland.
He allowed five hits, one walk and struck out five in an impressive performance. He ended his night by escaping a bases-loaded, no-out jam in the sixth by inducing two groundouts and a strikeout.
The Dodgers starters had combined for a 5.88 ERA over the previous 28 games — second worst in the majors in that span, contributing to the move to acquire Flaherty.
Gavin Lux gave Flaherty the lead in the third inning with a two-run single off Mitch Spence (7-7), leading the Dodgers to their second win in seven games on this road trip. Los Angeles now holds a 4 1/2-game lead in the NL West over San Diego.
The A’s had won 10 of 14 games with 31 homers before being shut down by Flaherty and the Los Angeles bullpen in front of an announced crowd of 35,207 that was the biggest this season at the Coliseum.
Ohtani stole two bases in the ninth and the Dodgers broke the game open with six runs to make it 10-0, setting the stage for position player Enrique Hernandez to finish the game with a scoreless inning of relief for Los Angeles.
“It’s been a tough road trip, a lot of games we could have won and didn’t,” Hernandez said in his postgame interview on SportsNetLA. “We came here on a mission to win a ballgame today, and we did that.”
Matt Kemp reached the 30-30 mark for the Dodgers in 2011, and Raul Mondesi did the same in both 1997 and 1999, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
