Much like the Boardwalk piece of McDonald’s Monopoly promotion and truffles, solid lefthanded relief pitching is highly sought after and hard to come by. The Braves bullpen this season has three lefties that are borderline dominant but only one of those arms called Atlanta home last season. In his second year of duty with the Braves, Eric O’Flaherty has become one of the most-tenured arms in the pen and is a pitcher that Braves manager is not afraid to call on in the later innings. Last season, his first with Atlanta, O’Flaherty appeared in 78 games and finished with a 3.04 ERA and a 2-1 record. After an off-season that saw Atlanta retool its bullpen by letting Rafael Soriano and Mike Gonzalez leave and replacing them with Billy Wagner and Takashi Saito, O’Flaherty was kept around, and he has seen his responsibilities grow. The lefty though says he is trying to keep everything the same, despite a role change. “I wouldn’t say it is too much different this year than last year,” says O’Flaherty. “I’m in a lot of the same situations, just a little bit later in the game.”
Last year O’Flaherty said he was used in more sixth inning situations whereas this year he has been mostly used as the main lefty out of the pen before getting to closer Billy Wagner, also a southpaw. “It started off with the same setup as we had last year with Billy and Saito stepping in where (Soriano) and Mike left off, and with Saito getting hurt, a lot of us know we had to step up and we’ve done a good job picking up the slack so far.” O’Flaherty has helped limit the opposition to just seven earned runs against him in his 27.2 innings of work thus far this season in 35 appearances.
The closer may get all of the attention and all-star consideration but sometimes it is the set-up men that truly get the tough outs. O’Flaherty realizes how important his one or two outs a game can be and he enjoys having some help in the pen with fellow lefty Jonny Venters. “It is nice this year having Jonny down there too so they can kind of mix and match with us like we did (recently) in Minnesota,” O’Flaherty recalled. “They went with me then (Peter) Moylan then there was another lefty coming up and Jonny was able to come in and face that guy, rather than me having to face a righty in the middle too.” Having options has allowed Cox to pick the perfect match-ups for each of his pitchers and has led to the pen’s outstanding work thus far this season. “We just have a stronger bullpen all-around so it’s taken a lot of pressure off everybody.”
But how will the bullpen and O’Flaherty hold up once the weather heats up? Last season, as the temperatures got hotter, the pen cooled off, along with the Braves’ playoff chances. This year the Braves are in first place, but O’Flaherty doesn’t feel any extra pressure. “I don’t see any pressure on anyone this year, surprisingly,” reveals O’Flaherty. “I would expect, being a first-place team, for us to be kind of pressing more and more, but everyone seems pretty much exactly the same as they did last year.” O’Flaherty’s strikeout to walk ratio has improved from last year, as has his strikeout per nine innings numbers. “We’re all playing hard and it seems like we’re comfortable and we believe in ourselves. We expect to be here and we belong here so we’re just going to go out and do our thing and let our talent take over.”
O’Flaherty may say it feels like last year, but he is doing better and not surprisingly, so are the Braves. “We’re just going to try and keep it going.”
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