It’s a mixed bag for three former Harvard-Westlake pitching stars on opening day

Max Fried pitched effectively for the Atlanta Braves in a loss. Jack Flaherty pitched erratically for the St. Louis Cardinals in a win. Chicago White Sox ace Lucas Giolito then capped a historic day for Studio City Harvard-Westlake High School with a strong start against the Angels, but it was wasted in a 4-3 loss in Anaheim.

It was something of a mixed bag for the former Harvard-Westlake stars who on Thursday became the first trio of players from the same high school team to make big-league opening-day starts in the same season.

All three, who played at Harvard-Westlake in 2012, had no-decisions, Fried giving up two runs and six hits, striking out eight and walking two in five innings of a 3-2, 10-inning loss at Philadelphia and Flaherty giving up six runs and six hits, striking out four and walking two in 4 1/3 innings of an 11-6 win at Cincinnati.

Giolito, a 26-year-old right-hander, was in line for a win Thursday night after giving up two runs and two hits, striking out eight and walking two in 5 1/3 innings and departing with a one-run lead in the sixth.

But the Angels rallied off White Sox left-hander Aaron Bummer in the eighth, using David Fletcher’s infield single off Bummer’s glove, second baseman Nick Madrigal’s throwing error and Mike Trout’s run-scoring single to left to tie the score 3-3.

Justin Upton capped an 11-pitch at-bat with a one-out walk to load the bases, and Albert Pujols drove in the go-ahead run with a chopper to third.

Angels

Angels open season with energetic win over White Sox

The Angels defeat the Chicago White Sox 4-3 on opening day on Thursday at Angel Stadium.

April 1, 2021

Giolito retired the first 11 batters he faced, six by strikeout, with five of his whiffs coming on changeups that floated inside and sometimes darted outside the strike zone.

But Giolito, who threw a no-hitter against Pittsburgh last Aug. 25, would not repeat history Thursday night. He walked Trout and Anthony Rendon with two outs in the fourth, and Upton dumped a soft run-scoring single to center field to tie the score 1-1.

Max Stassi drove an 82.5-mph changeup that stayed up over the center-field wall to pull the Angels to within 3-2 in the fifth. With Giolito’s pitch count at 87, Chicago manager Tony LaRussa pulled the starter in favor of Codi Heuer in the sixth.

“The home run is fine, but the two walks … the baseball gods kind of came down on me there,” Giolito said. “You walk two with two outs, there’s a broken-bat basehit … that’s just the way it goes sometimes. I felt pretty good about it, though. It was a good [start] to build off of for the rest of the year.”

Giolito was especially encouraged by a changeup that seemed to have a mind of its own, sometimes breaking right to left, sometimes fading left to right. The pitch, thrown between 81.8 mph and 85.1 mph, offset his four-seam fastball, which averaged 95.0 mph.

“Yeah, the changeup was definitely my go-to off-speed pitch tonight,” Giolito said. “I threw some good ones. I left one middle-middle for the home run; that will happen sometimes. But I liked the movement on it. I liked the velocity difference. It was right where it needs to be.”

Fried, the 27-year-old Braves left-hander, gave up one run on a first-inning sacrifice fly and another on a third-inning ground-ball single that left J.T. Realmuto’s bat at 61.6 mph. He departed with a 2-0 deficit, but Pablo Sandoval took him off the hook for a potential loss with a score-tying, two-out, two-run homer in the seventh.

Atlanta Braves’ Max Fried plays during a game against the Philadelphia Phillies on Thursday in Philadelphia.

(Matt Slocum / Associated Press)

With a game-time temperature of 49 degrees and winds blowing at 19 mph, Fried struggled to find command of his curveball early in the game. He walked one batter and hit another with a pitch, helping the Phillies load the bases in their run-scoring first.

“It’s just one of those things where you have to make adjustments in-game to fix that,” Fried told reporters afterward. “Unfortunately, I didn’t do it quick enough in the beginning, and I obviously put us behind.”

The Cardinals gave Flaherty, a 25-year-old right-hander, a huge cushion by scoring six runs in the top of the first inning on a 27-degree afternoon that featured a few snow flurries in Great American Ball Park.

St. Louis Cardinals’ Jack Flaherty throws during a game against the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati on Thursday. The Cardinals won 11-6.

(Aaron Doster / Associated Press)

But Flaherty gave up four runs in the first four innings, including homers to Nick Castellanos and Eugenio Suarez, and two more in the fifth, an inning that featured Jesse Winker’s one-out walk, Castellanos’ double to left, Joey Votto RBI single and Suarez’s walk.

His pitch count at 94 and two outs shy of qualifying for a win, Flaherty was pulled in favor of Tyler Webb, who gave up a sacrifice fly to Mike Moustakas and got pinch-hitter Aristides Aquino to pop out.

“That fifth inning kind of unraveled,” Flaherty said. “It was pretty much my own doing. Get an out, walk a guy, make a bad 1-and-2 pitch, then a guy puts a good swing on a tough pitch, and then you walk a guy. But Webby did a good job of getting out of that.”