"They All Made the Leap": Sharing the HS Mound With Jack Flaherty, Max Fried and Lucas Giolito

At 4:30 p.m. EST on Friday, Jack Flaherty will walk to the mound at SunTrust Park in Atlanta and attempt to shove his Cardinals team one step closer to a potential trip to Dodger Stadium.

Not quite the "Dodgers starting shortstop" role he likely envisioned for himself a decade ago, but not bad, either.

When he looks to the opposing Atlanta bullpen, he'll see Max Fried, a hard-throwing lefty who whiffed two in a scoreless inning in Game 1, and someone who's also trying to get back to L.A. But seven years prior, Fried was in the process of becoming a part of Flaherty's baseball family. He was the fresh face joining the Cards righty at Harvard-Westlake High School, coming over from Montclair Prep in Van Nuys, Calif., a stage upon which he'd thoroughly dominated before they chose to cut their baseball program. Stiff competition for Flaherty, who was still a sophomore, for sure.

It's nothing he wasn't used to, though. After all, he'd already been the second most-hyped pitcher in his own rotation. That No. 1 spot belonged to Lucas Giolito, the 6-6 behemoth and scout's darling with 100 MPH gas and a massive bender for the purposes of execution.

"Jack was actually our starting shortstop when he wasn't on the mound," said Brandon Deere, a fellow member of the Harvard-Westlake rotation that included three now-big leaguers. "He didn't throw that hard to start. 80-85 miles per hour. Lucas [Giolito] always did, he was this huge, long-armed kid. Jack didn't have the wow factor of Lucas, but his stats were always better than Lucas'."

"Flaherty was a really talented dude. One of those guys who was on varsity right away as a freshman," Connor Dillman, the team's closer in 2010 and 2011, told us. "Lucas, we played little league together, but didn't really know each other well until he got to Harvard-Westlake. He lived right down the street, so when we joined the team, we decided to carpool to practice everyday."

"Lucas actually met his wife in my carpool," Dillman recounted proudly.

Nearly every game at Harvard-Westlake from 2010-2012 prominently featured a future professional, which did not go unnoticed by those who populated the rest of the field, who were far more unsure of their baseball future (or already knew they would someday follow other paths, but were locked in on contributing from minute one).

"When I was in ninth grade, the baseball team was not good at all," Deere told us. "Coach Matt LaCour turned the program around by recruiting Jack, recruiting Max, and just installing a great culture in general. They won the CIF (California Interscholastic Federation) Championship without Lucas and Max the year after they graduated."

"We had this incredible pitching coach named Ethan Katz," Dillman made sure to note (as did Deere). "He kind of created and fostered this amazing little brotherhood between all of us. It was kind of a shared goal. We had this way of communicating with each other and sharing pitch grips, mental tools, sort of a shared experience that we all grew together with."

Though it would seem to be overwhelming pressure for a team to gel around three men who knew their next step would be professional progression, the rest of the staff seemed to relish in the atmosphere.

"We would do rotations, and there would be a game where you weren't playing and you'd be behind home plate doing stats and the radar gun. When Lucas is getting bigger and Max is throwing hard, you've got 20-25 scouts right behind you looking at the gun, and you hear them talking," Deere said. "Then, college scouts turned into pro scouts. The first few times, you were like, 'Man, this is cool,' and then you get completely used to it."

"I came into close games even if it wasn't less than a three-run lead. I was supposed to be the cap on the game no matter what," recalled Dillman, who entered an awful lot of pressure situations for someone who wasn't even a full-time pitcher until his junior season. "I got hurt a lot and never really found a position that fit naturally. I really loved hitting, but I wasn't as incredible at it as a lot of my teammates were. Not as good a fielder. People said it was a good decision on (Coach LaCour's) part to put me on the mound, but he joked it was the last place he could put me."

And suddenly, that "last resort" was all that would stand between Lucas Giolito, Jack Flaherty, and resume-padding victories. Next man up. That was Harvard-Westlake's culture.

"You see these guys right away, and you're like, 'These guys are special'. They're playing highly-recruited guys all across California, and they're making them look silly. All I have to do is be somewhat presentable," Deere chuckled. "One day at practice, someone told us Max was coming. It was kind of a big deal. We had this guy who we played against for several years, and we knew was great, and he's a great guy. We're so down for this guy to be on our team. Briefly, I'm like, 'Oh, shit he's gonna cut into my pitching time,' but it just didn't matter. It was awesome."

Through the years, the notable moments piled up, as the crew traveled throughout the state, making elite opponents look pedestrian.

"Don't forget, Jack was an Under Armour All-American as an infielder," Dillman made sure to note. "His freshman year, I remember he took a low and outside fastball and drilled an opposite field homer onto the roof of their batting cage. Really, really good athletes make things look easy, and that's why it was fun to watch Jack. His movements were smooth...he would do things that you knew were extremely difficult, and he was so young doing it."

"We played Christian Yelich at Westlake," Deere remembered fondly. "He was a senior when Lucas was a sophomore. I'm 90% sure -- don't kill me -- that Yelich homered off him. Usually, all he needed was the fastball to get guys out, though."

When Fried brought his heavy bender aboard, the team could theoretically trot out Giolio or the lefty on back-to-back days, with Flaherty manning short and subbing in to close out a victory. However, the best-laid plans often fall by the wayside; Giolito developed an elbow issue senior year, on a collision course with the No. 1 overall pick, and needed Tommy John surgery.

"You know, when you're an athlete, your body is kind of what you rely on. When you hit 100 MPH, and you have all that momentum and attention on you, it's extremely stressful for someone who's 17, 18," Dillman, who kept in touch with Giolito while he was away at his freshman year of college, remembered. "It's a really disheartening thing. I know that he tried to be pretty low-key with the way he talked about it, and didn't want too much attention being paid."

"Losing Lucas was tough, but Fried was basically the same deal from the left side," Deere said. "That overpowering type guy, power curveball."

Luckily, like it so often seems to be these days, Giolito's surgery rehab was surely grueling, but it now seems to be but a speed bump in his narrative. It should be no surprise to anyone who was around them in their high school days that these three down-to-earth stars all appear to have come of age in the big leagues in tandem.

"Lucas has such a good feel for pitching now. He's really confident with his pitches now," Dillman said. "Lucas having James McCann and Jack having Yadi Molina was such a big part of it, too. It's why if you go to a Double-A game, you see so many nasty pitchers who don't have the same level of command. The catchers and culture matter."

"You knew at some point those guys were gonna make it," Deere asserted, "But they all made it at basically the exact same time. That was crazy. Made it to the bigs last year, then all made the leap in 2019. They're still together."

As for the other guys who helped anchor the Wolverines? They're proud of their work and their roles, and they're as ready as Flaherty and Fried likely are for a potential return to Dodger Stadium, with the lights of the postseason firmly illuminated.

"I'm a Dodgers fan, first and foremost," Deere stated firmly. "If the Dodgers play against one of these pitchers I played with, I'm going to hope for a 1-0 game, and maybe the Dodgers win against the closer. I wish the best for them."

As for Dillman's allegiance? "I mostly follow the guys I played with now," he told us. "When you are an athlete and you have teammates who are really good at what they do, there's a kind of pride that comes along with being a part of their story."