Just a week earlier, he looked like he was a reason, if not the That’s why the Dodgers couldn’t win the World Series.

On Sunday night, he became a reason why they could.

In a 9-0 victory over the New York Mets in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series, Jack Flaherty delivered the kind of performance that will immortalize him in these parts when his team parades down Sunset Boulevard early next month.

Flaherty was Sandy Koufax.

Flaherty was Fernando Valenzuela.

Flaherty was Orel Hershiser.

Through seven shutout innings, he limited the Mets to two hits, back-to-back singles by Jesse Winker and Jose Iglesias in the fifth inning.

Read more: Plaschke: 33 scoreless innings! Dodger pitchers zero in on history in Game 1 win

The number of innings Flaherty pitched was just as important as the number of runs he allowed, as they kept manager Dave Roberts from using a high-leverage reliever outside of Daniel Hudson.

The result: The Dodgers can play a bullpen game in Game 2 on Monday.

A similar pitching plan produced a shutout against the San Diego Padres in the previous round. When the Dodgers head to New York for the middle three games of this best-of-seven series, they could very well do so with a two-games-to-none lead.

“It was huge that we had seven innings in a long series,” Roberts said.

The performance was also meaningful on a personal level for Flaherty, who was born and raised in the Los Angeles area.

Flaherty was six months old when he attended his first game at Dodger Stadium. Throughout his youth, he attended as many as twenty games per season. In this stadium he pitched Harvard-Westlake High to a CIF Southern Section Division I championship.

The Dodgers acquiring him from the Detroit Tigers at the trade deadline marked a full circle moment for him. Closing the Mets on Sunday night was something he said “you can’t really put into words.”

“I saw some family there when I was warming up and I had been here to games with them before,” Flaherty said. “So it lets you relax a little bit.”

Seven days after being hit for four runs in 5 ⅓ innings in his first postseason game for the Dodgers, Flaherty produced one of the best starts of his eight-year career. He struck out six. He only ran two.

“It was a pitching clinic,” Roberts said. “Once we got ahead, he did a great job of just getting after guys and attacking.”

When Flaherty returned to the bench midway through the seventh inning, he was hit on the back by Shohei Ohtani. He was hugged by Roberts.

“Really, Jack did a fantastic job,” Ohtani said.

Flaherty got a pinch moment moments later when Clayton Kershaw put his arms around him.

Flaherty grew up admiring Kershaw, so much so that when he thinks of the Dodgers’ postseason pitching tradition, he doesn’t think of Koufax, Valenzuela or Hershiser.

“The answer is there is only one: Kersh,” Flaherty said.

Flaherty continued, “Regardless of what people want to say about his postseason numbers, he’s had a lot of really good numbers. He has been an absolute stud throughout his career.

“I think back to all those starts he had where he was phenomenal, taking the ball on three days’ rest and going out and still going six, seven innings no matter what. That guy is second to none.”

To echo Flaherty’s point, the last Dodgers pitcher to have an extended scoreless start in the postseason was Kershaw, who blanked the Milwaukee Brewers over eight innings in the wild-card round in 2020. The Dodgers won the World Series.

“Getting a hug from him afterwards and letting him know it was a really good job is special and things you can’t make out of it,” Flaherty said.

That also applied to the hug he received after the game from his mother, Eileen.

“It’s hard not to laugh at those things,” Flaherty said.

Suddenly, the Dodgers’ rotation doesn’t look combustible — or “horrible,” as I wrote in a column last week. Suddenly, the Dodgers have a pitching staff that hasn’t allowed a run in the last 33 innings, tying a postseason record set by the 1966 Baltimore Orioles. Suddenly, between Flaherty and NLDS hero Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Dodgers appear to have the starting lineup they need. pitching to win not only in this round but also in the World Series.

Flaherty was living a dream Sunday night. The Dodgers and their fans grew closer to theirs.

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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.