What Max Fried, Yankees make of his 6-week slump that just got worse

Yahoo

2 days ago

ST. LOUIS — You could see the frustration in Max Fried's facial expressions, hear it in his voice.
Mixed in was a lot of relief. This time, his Yankees teammates bailed him out.
After six bad starts and one good one since the beginning of July, Fried hit a new rock bottom Saturday night at Busch Stadium and still wound up the winning pitcher in a 12-8 Yankees comeback victory.
Facing a very mediocre Cardinals lineup, Fried was behind 5-2 by the second inning and ended up allowing a season-high seven runs over five-plus innings.
'I can't give the guys enough credit,' Fried said. 'They came out and played a really great game and picked me up big time, especially with the performance that I had.
'I wish I would have been able to be a little bit better and less runs up there, but at the end of the day we got the win. It's the most important thing.'
True, but here's something even more important:
The Yankees probably aren't going back to the World Series unless Fried gets back to pitching like he did when he started his first Yankees season 10-2 with a 1.92 ERA in 17 starts through June.
Since, Fried is 3-3 with a very poor 6.80 ERA in eight starts. He's allowed at least four runs in each, but was only charged with two earned runs in a 6 2/3-inning start on June 29 at Yankee Stadium, a win over the Rays
What's his level of concern?
'I definitely want to pitch better, but I'm not in any panic mode,' Fried said. 'There's motivation to make sure that I don't keep doing this.'
The motivation has been there along with relentless between-starts work, but a couple bad starts has turned into a six-week slump with the Yankees' regular season down to 39 games.
Fried probably has just seven starts remaining, then it'll be off to October … if the Yankees get there. And if they do, they probably have no shot of getting back to the World Series unless Fried is back pitching like an ace.
That's what they expect.
'It's baseball,' manager Aaron Boone said. 'Even the elite-level pitchers go through little things like this at times. He'll get there. He'll get through it. There's nothing wrong with him physically. He's in a good spot. The stuff's there.
'It's just another level of execution. You're going through it a little bit. so you're mentally fighting yourself a little bit. There's no alarming like his stuff is down, what's wrong with this? It's not that, so he's too good to not get through it.'
Maybe.
His pitching line would have been better if rookie left fielder Jasson Dominguez had caught that shallow first-inning flyball instead of it falling in and then rolling past him all the way to the wall for a triple that turned into a run. The next inning, the Cardinals' four-run second included a couple soft-contact singles, one a chopper that bounced over third baseman Ryan McMahon's head and into left field for a run-scoring hit.
Also, Fried looked pretty good retiring 11 of 12 Cardinals after 5-foot-9 shortstop Masyn Wynn belted a three-run homer that put the Yankees in a 5-2 hole, but his outing ended poorly. With Fried back out for the sixth, a 9-5 Yankees lead quickly became a two-run game when Jordan Walker hit a leadoff double and Nolan Gorman followed with a homer.
That was it for Fried, who allowed at least seven runs for the third time in 193 career outings over nine seasons, 176 of them starts.
'A couple bounces don't go his way and then gets hit with the three-run homer,' Boone said. 'Then I actually thought he settled in really good. I thought he got into a good rhythm. The strike throwing was where it needed to be. Then goes back out for the sixth after we had a long inning and they had a pitching change. Maybe sitting down over there that long impacted it a little bit.
'Obviously he has things still to work on there. I feel like he's close.'
Fried began July allowing seven runs over 11 innings in two starts, a win and no-decision, then exited his last outing prior to the All-Star break after three innings due to a blister on his pitching hand. That pushed back his first post-break start a few days, but the blister hasn't been a problem in the second half.
'He was obviously flying high for a long time, then maybe that (blister) threw his mechanics off a little bit,' GM Brian Cashman said.
The mechanics aren't off, Fried said.
'I just haven't been sharp and I haven't had the good results,' he said. 'You've got to go out there and have good outings and I haven't been able to do that. I'm working hard in-between to try to make the best adjustments that I can.
'They haven't really been showing, but we're here to win games so we were really fortunate to put up 12 runs and we were able to cover me. But I know that going forward I've got to be way better.'
FRIED'S WORST CAREER STARTS
April 6, 2024, Braves vs. Diamondbacks: 4.1 IP, 10 runs, 8 runs, 7 ER, 1 BB, 5 K, 1 HR, NO-DECISION
April 13, 2021, Braves vs. Marlins: 4 IP, 9 hits, 8 runs, 7 ER, 2 BB, 3 K, 2 HR, LOSS
Aug. 26, 2025, Yankees at Cardinals: 5 IP, 8 hits, 7 runs, 7 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 2 HR, WIN
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Randy Miller may be reached at [e-mail].