LOS ANGELES — Yankees left-hander Max Fried showed a different side on the Dodger Stadium mound Friday night, then another standing at his locker talking about his first loss of the season.

Two batters into an 8-5 Dodgers win, Aaron Judge hit his 19th homer of the season for a 1-0 Yankees lead in the opener of the World Series rematch weekend.

Given an early edge, Fried grooved a belt-high, first-pitch fastball to Shohei Ohtani, who belted the mistake over the center-field wall. Giving up the lead right away on a mistake pitch made Fried mad at himself.

“I wasn’t trying to go up, [in the strike zone]” Fried said.

Maybe he wasn’t. but Fried did it again in the sixth, when Ohtani hit an identical pitch for his 22nd home run of the season.

“I made two mistakes in the same spot and he hit them out,” Fried said.

Ohtani’s second homer ignited a rally that turned a 5-2 Yankees lead into 6-5 Dodgers advantage — another comeback victory and another painful reminder of how the Yankees fold in the World Series.

“The situation is a little different,” Ohtani said in Japanese, “but I think coming back to win is always good.”

After a few more mistake pitches hurt Fried, he was pulled from a 5-4 game with two on and nobody out. Both runs scored, and Fried was charged with six runs over five-plus innings — after he allowed 10 earned runs over his first 11 starts, and never more than two runs in an outing.

The Yankees hit four homers — Judge, Austin Wells, Trent Grisham and Paul Goldschmidt — and still that wasn’t enough for Fried.

There’s another concern here: The rap against Fried while he was with the Braves was that he wasn’t up to the task in the postseason: He is 2-5 with an ERA of 5.10 and 66 strikeouts in 20 appearances. Friday night’s game was as close to a postseason contest as Fried has pitched for the Yankees and he bombed again.

He was frustrated. You could hear it his voice and see it on his face. He is now 7-1 with an ERA that climbed from 1.29 to 1.92.

“I’m a competitor,” Fried said. “I want to go out there and win. So the fact that we had a lead and I gave it up a couple times, it’s not going to sit well with me.

“You’ve just got to be able to use it as motivation to go out next time and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Fried knows what went wrong in his first bad outing since he signed with the Yankees last winter for $212 million over eight seasons.

“Mostly just execution,” he said. “Leaving balls in the middle of the plate. Not going to the locations that I wanted to.

“When you’re facing a good team with good hitters, you’re going to pay for it.”

Fried said he let his teammates down by blowing leads of 1-0 and 5-2.

“[The Dodgers] are good players,” Fried said. “Obviously, a big core group of them won the World Series last year and they know how to win games.

“But I felt like (our) guys did a great job putting up early runs, and, for the most part, I just didn’t do my job.”

Judge disagreed with the “didn’t do my job” line while predicting a big rebound outing when Fried makes his next start, probably Thursday against Cleveland at Yankee Stadium.

“He’s going to be fine,” Judge said. “He’s been the best pitcher in the game all year, and he’s going up against a great ballclub that’s going to put up some great at-bats against you all night long.

“He went out there and battled. You’re going to have games like this, but we’ve got all the confidence in the world in Max and what he’s able to do. I’m looking forward to him being out there in another five days.”

Judge liked that Fried took this loss hard. That’s an affirmation of how much Fried cares and how badly he wants to win every start.

“That’s why he signed here,” Judge said. “He wanted to sign here to play in big games, play in big moments, play for the best team. He takes everything personal, and that’s what you want out of your ace right now. We feed off that energy. I know he’s going to come back ready to go.”

But Judge was talking about June, not October.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting us with a subscription.

Randy Miller may be reached at [email protected].