The Yankees’ pitching staff as a whole has been magnificent, allowing six runs across their first six games and tallying three shutouts in the first five. Max Fried has been at the forefront of this staff-wide domination, not allowing a run across his first two starts and 13.1 innings. His second start of the year came against the Mariners and he looked even more in control than on Opening Day, limiting Seattle to three hits and a walk across seven shutout. His command was sharper at T-Mobile Park than it was at Oracle, allowing him to strike out six batters. While it was certainly encouraging to see the uptick in swing and miss, the moment we’ll zero in on today focuses on his ability to make exactly the pitch needed to induce soft contact and get out of a jam.
We join Fried with two outs in the bottom of the seventh, Josh Naylor having erased a Julio Rodríguez leadoff single with a ground-ball double play. However, after cruising for most of his start, Fried now faces his toughest challenge, a Randy Arozarena HBP and Brendan Donovan single putting runners on first and second as Fried is fighting to hold off the fatigue long enough to complete seven strong.
Fried has already faced Victor Robles twice this game, getting him to fly out on a first-pitch cutter in the second before whiffing him on a changeup in the fifth. After deploying the cutter first pitch in those two encounters, Fried decides on a first-pitch four-seamer here.
Fried misses his spot low and away; reaching back for extra velocity caused him to pull this pitch inside for ball one.
Despite the imperfect execution of the previous pitch, Fried sticks with the four-seamer.
He misses his spot again, but this time over the plate enough to entice Robles to chase. It’s a smart miss, the elevation above the zone causing Robles to foul it back and level the count at 1-1.
After two straight four-seamers up and in, Fried chooses a different type of fastball, this time looking to bury the cutter in on Robles’ hands.
This is awesome pitch sequencing from Fried. Following a pair of consecutive four-seamers off the plate, this looks like a cookie right down the middle. However, unlike the four-seamer which stays on plane vertically while fading slightly to Fried’s arm-side, the cutter has late movement glove-side and down. Robles isn’t able to distinguish this pitch from the two four-seamers that preceded it and is unable to adjust his swing plane. Thus, the ball eats him up inside, Robles getting jammed while the late downward tilt takes the ball even further below the barrel causing him to pound it into the dirt foul at home plate.
Now that Fried has shown Robles a fastball that breaks in on his hands, he has a chance for the punchout looking if he can start a four-seamer in off the plate and tail it back across the inside corner. There’s even an opportunity to get Robles to whiff should he recognize the four-seamer late and still swing.
Fried locates this four-seamer perfectly on the inside edge of the zone. However, it’s just low enough that Robles is able to fight it off foul with practically the handle of the bat to stay alive.
Fried has shown Robles four straight fastballs up and in and has sped up his swing to the velocity of the fastball. That means it is the perfect opportunity to throw his first off-speed pitch of the encounter, Fried choosing a changeup off the plate away looking for the strikeout swinging.
Fried executes the pitch to his spot and is rewarded with a favorable outcome, Robles lining a lazy fly ball to the opposite field to strand the pair of runners. If we’re being picky, the location of the changeup is probably a few inches too high, which is what allowed Robles to make contact instead of whiff. However, this is the magic of managing your misses as a pitcher. Fried made sure that at the very least he commanded this pitch out of the zone away. The changeup is therefore too far away from Robles for him to pull it, while the movement down and away from his barrel prevents him from hitting it with authority to the opposite field. Fried is one of the masters in the game at limiting damaging contact, and pitch is a perfect example of how he does that.
Here’s the full sequence:
Courtesy of Baseball Savant
Outside of his lone ALDS start against the Blue Jays, Max Fried has been everything the Yankees could have hoped for when they signed him winter before last. He has been an invaluable stabilizing presence at the top of the rotation, giving the Yankees a consistently reliable ace in Gerrit Cole’s absence. If these first two starts are anything to go off, it looks like he is taking his game to an even higher level in his second year in pinstripes, setting the tone for the rest of the pitching staff.