Max Fried Has Become Yankees' Ace With Gerrit Cole Sidelined
LOS ANGELES—Despite Max Fried's loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers Friday night at Dodger Stadium, the left-hander has more than helped the Yankees overcome the absence of staff ace Gerrit Cole, who is sideline for the season with an elbow injury.
Aaron Judge said he doesn't know where the Yankees would be without Fried, like Cole a Los Angeles-area native.
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'I knew Max was always this good from just watching him on TV with the Braves, watching them on their World Series run, what he was able to do,' Judge said before the Yanks salvaged the finale of the three-game series with Sunday's 7-3 win. 'But now watching him up close you see the total package.'
Fried was supposed to give the Yankees a potent starting one-two pitching punch when he signed as a free agent this past offseason for eight year and $218 million. Cole then blew out his right elbow during spring training and had to undergo Tommy John ligament replacement surgery. He had missed nearly the first three months of the 2024 season with soreness in the same elbow.
Cole's in the midst of nine-year, $324 million contract and for the Yankees this year his $36 million is dead money – salary guaranteed to a player not on the active roster.
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He's gone for the season until sometime into 2026 as he rehabs from a surgery that left a scraggily scar on that elbow. He's on the trip to California and said he's still in the strength and conditioning phase of his recovery. Picking up a baseball and tossing it is still down the road. The typical rehab from his kind of surgery could take as long as 18 months.
'I'm a little bit of a pragmatic type of guy,' Cole said. 'I want to just take it a day at time, but I feel like everything is going fine right now. Part of the challenge of these long processes is not to get ahead of yourself.'
Meanwhile Fried, with ample help in the starting rotation from Carlos Rodon, has more than filled the gap. He went into Friday's game with a 7-0 record and a league-leading 1.28 ERA. After a pair of Shohei Ohtani homers and a blown 5-2 lead, he took the 8-5 loss. His record fell to 7-1 and his ERA increased to 1.92, now good for fifth in the Major Leagues.
Fried wasn't around last fall when the Yankees met the Dodgers in the World Series. He was still a member of the Atlanta Braves. But the results Friday night were much the same as Game 5 at Yankee Stadium when Cole was on the mound and the Yankees blew a 5-0 lead on a shoddy display of fifth-inning defense. They lost the series that night.
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Judge dropped a liner to center, Anthony Volpe made a bad throw to third base, and Cole failed to cover first base on a Mookie Betts' grounder to Anthony Rizzo.
Cole said that night that he would take the responsibility for the loss, but not the blame.
'I took a bad angle to the ball,' he said. 'By the time it got by me I was not in position to cover first.'
With seven months and 3,000 miles separating the situations, Fried didn't feel any better Friday night and the Yankees' pitching collapsed on Saturday in a crushing, 18-2 loss.
'I thought the guys did a great job getting me an early lead,' Fried, who had forearm problems of his own last season and missed a month, said Friday night. 'I just didn't do the job. I'm a competitor and I want to go out here and win. We had a lead, and I gave it up a couple of times. It just doesn't sit well with me.'
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Asked if he liked that kind of spirit from Fried, Yanks manager Aaron Boone said Saturday: 'I like everything about him.'
Boone feels the same way about Judge, who continues to pound the ball in what has been an historic first two months of the season that ended on Saturday. He hit .398 with 21 homers, 50 RBIs, 86 hits, 54 runs scored, a .490 on-base percentage and a 1.268 OPS.
Judge hit three first-pitch solo homers in the first two games of the Dodgers series, the type of performance of which the Yanks have become accustomed, two of them behind Fried.
'He's been doing that all season, so it's not surprising,' Fried said.
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Even with Fried's first poor outing of the season, he's still has an 0.97 WHIP, 70 strikeouts in 75 innings and has allowed just 16 earned runs, 57 hits and 16 walks in his first 12 starts. Opponents are hitting .205 against him.
Like Cole, Fried has World Series experience. Cole pitched for Houston twice in 2019 and split his two starts as the Astros lost in seven games to the Washington Nationals. Two years later, Fried was on the mound for the Braves against the Astros in a deciding Game 6. He pitched six innings of no-run, four hit ball in a 7-0 championship-winning effort. By that time, Cole had already signed with the Yankees.
The fact that Cole went down after the Yankees signed Fried is no small consolation.
'Max has been a huge contributor to where we are right now,' Cole said. 'Aaron having the season he's had for us is always a driving force. He's really steady Eddie every day and we're lucky to have him. It's just tough for me to sit here watching it. But that's the hand I was dealt and I'm trying to play it the best I can.'
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