For the first few months of the season, lefty Max Fried seemed like a New York Yankees savior. Following the spring training injuries that put ace Gerrit Cole on the shelf for the year, and caused Clarke Schmidt and Luis Gil to miss significant time, the Yankees needed Fried to come through big time. And he delivered.
Through June 25, Fried was a front-runner for the AL Cy Young award, posting a razor-thin 1.92 ERA over his first 17 starts, making his eight-year, $218 million contract seem like money well spent. Things couldn’t have looked better, and former teammates came out of the woodwork to heap praise on Fried, both as a pitcher and a person.
All looked to be smooth sailing, but then Fried hit a wall. From June 26 onward, Fried lost his mojo. From that date up until his most recent start, the southpaw made eight starts and got pummeled, giving up a .283/.354/.486 line and posting a 6.80 ERA while also missing some time due to a blister issue.
Fried’s start Friday night against the hated Boston Red Sox should have provided a glimmer of hope. The 31-year-old rose to the occasion, going six scoreless innings, allowing four hits and three walks in what was his first appearance without allowing an earned run since June 25. Unfortunately for the Yankees, that wasn’t enough to keep them out of the loss column as the team’s myriad of issues coalesced to show just how out of sync they really are.
Even Max Fried getting back on track can’t help the Yankees get back in sync
While Fried did his job and handled the Red Sox lineup, his offense let him down. New York couldn’t figure anything out against Brayan Bello, who went seven strong and allowed just three hits and one walk to the extremely hot-and-cold Yankees offense.
The offense fared even worse once Bello left the game, getting mowed down by Garrett Whitlock and former Yankee Aroldis Chapman for the final six outs, striking out four times and failing to manage a single base runner.
Meanwhile, Yankee arsonist Mark Leiter Jr. was forced to come into a scoreless game in the seventh, thanks in large part to the ineptitude of the new-look Yankee bullpen, and promptly coughed up a couple of doubles that allowed Boston to take a 1-0 lead.
That’d be it for the scoring in the snooze-fest, where the most exciting action of the night came courtesy of a squirrel gallivanting around the field. Rodents aside, Fried’s start was a microcosm of what has gone wrong for the Yankees this season.
It seems like forever ago that the team was clicking on all cylinders, largely because they haven’t been able to put together a game where the offense, starting pitching, and bullpen are all performing up to expectations while also not shooting themselves in the foot with defensive miscues and baserunning blunders.
If Friday night’s start is truly a turning point for Fried to get back to his dominant ways down the stretch, it will be a good sign for the Yankees. That said, a lot more is still needed, and they’ll have to figure out a way to have the bats show up at the same time as the pitching and stop beating themselves in the process.
