PHOENIX — Jack Flaherty finally felt the feeling he had been trying so hard to ignore as he sat on the bench in the top of the sixth inning. He knew his pitch count and that he probably only had an inning left in him. For the past few weeks, he had successfully driven out the noise regarding MLB’s looming trade deadline and his future with the Cardinals, the only ballclub he has ever known. But when Alec Burleson lined out to end the top half of the frame and the Cardinals position players gathered their hats and gloves to take the field, Flaherty could no longer block out the significance of what he was about to do.

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Flaherty knows the writing is on the wall. The Cardinals are selling at this trade deadline. They have not approached Flaherty, who will be a first-time free agent at the end of the year, with talks of an extension. And when he reached the mound at Chase Field in the bottom of the sixth inning Wednesday afternoon, he knew he was likely doing so for the final time as a Cardinal.

“I won’t lie,” Flaherty said to reporters after the Cardinals’ 11-7 win over the Diamondbacks. “I was a little bit distracted. This is probably the first time I’ve ever been distracted over something that wasn’t baseball.”

“It just kind of happened,” he added. “It was probably the last inning I got, (I wanted) to go out and do what I needed to do and I tried to do a little bit too much. I just got caught up in everything that was going on. I think I’ve done a good job of taking it for what it is prior to that, but I think in that inning I got a little bit away from myself.”

Flaherty’s potential final start as a Cardinal was inauspicious. He was unable to record an out in that sixth inning and was lifted with a runner on first after allowing a game-tying solo shot to Emmanuel Rivera to lead off the inning. His final line featured three earned runs, eight hits, two walks, four strikeouts and a no-decision.

Less than a week remains before the Aug. 1 trade deadline. Flaherty expects he’ll be traded by then.

“It’s something you kind of know, you get a feeling for with the way things are going, and the way (the organization) is going about it,” Flaherty said. “It’s a business, and I’ve got my job to do which is to win games every time I take the mound.”

Jack Flaherty, Filthy 75mph Curveball. 😷

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) July 26, 2023

But the reality isn’t as black and white as Flaherty tried to make it sound. He has spent nearly a decade with St. Louis. He has grown up through this organization. That growth hasn’t been linear. There have been highs, like his emergence as the club’s top pitching prospect and his spectacular second half of 2019 and what began as an early Cy Young contending season in 2021. There have also been lows: the shortened 2020 COVID-19 season that dampened his spark, an oblique strain that derailed his promising 2021 campaign, subsequent shoulder injuries following the oblique injury, public (and private) spats with the front office.

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Yet through it all, Flaherty remained committed to winning for his ballclub. His messaging wasn’t always clear — his direct tone, dry nature and sometimes general smartassery didn’t always land with the fan base. But one thing that Flaherty’s teammates and coaches never questioned was his desire to perform. To Flaherty, winning with the Cardinals was his highest priority. And if he is indeed traded, the fact that he didn’t win will be what he regards as the most disappointing.

“The last couple of years, you look up and you wonder,” Flaherty said. “If I had been healthy most of the year, we’d go out and win the division in 2021. You wonder if I come back healthier after tearing my oblique, what that team could do. You set out to win, and we didn’t do that. That part is frustrating because that’s what the game’s about. It’s not about anything else, about any of the other stuff that goes on. It’s not about individual numbers.

“If the individual numbers equate to winning? Great. If they don’t, then what are you doing?”

It would be easy for Flaherty to look at the last four years and view them as disappointing. He never performed up to the hype after 2019, when he burst onto the national scene as one of baseball’s most tantalizing arms and offered the potential to be one of the most exciting players in the Cardinals’ recent history. But he’s matured over the years and has come to terms with many of those factors being out of his control. He could not control a global pandemic, a freak injury he sustained taking a swing of a bat — something National League pitchers wouldn’t be required to do by the following season. He could only control how he responded.

Flaherty didn’t always handle it perfectly, but he always handled it with full effort. That’s what made this likely final chapter easier to comprehend.

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“If you did everything you possibly could, it doesn’t make it hard to wrap your head around,” Flaherty said. “It’s frustrating, for sure. But it’s a little bit more frustrating if you went to bed every night and thought ‘Well, could I have done this, or that? Could I have done a little bit more that day? Did I give everything I had for this team, for this city?’

“People can say whatever they want to say. People have said a lot of different s—, but all I’ve ever done is try to literally give all I had every day. And I can put my head down at night and say that I did everything I could.”

Flaherty can take some solace in that sentiment, but it can’t erase the overall letdown. He didn’t win a title here. His potential, his talent, his mentality all should have led to one, at least that’s what he believes.

“My biggest disappointment is that we didn’t win the whole thing,” Flaherty said. “That was the goal.”

Flaherty and the Cardinals, after delivering so much hope and so much promise in their National League Championship Series run in 2019, have yet to return to the NLCS, let alone advance to the World Series. When Flaherty handed manager Oli Marmol the ball and walked off the mound Wednesday, the biggest question wasn’t if he’d be traded or where he’d end up.

It was simply a question of what could have been.

(Photo: Matt Kartozian / USA Today)