{"id":522191,"date":"2026-01-15T20:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T20:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/522191\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T20:08:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T20:08:13","slug":"one-year-later-yankees-praised-for-max-fried-signing-despite-blue-jays-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/522191\/","title":{"rendered":"One year later: Yankees praised for Max Fried signing despite Blue Jays loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

One year later: Yankees praised for Max Fried signing despite Blue Jays loss <\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Outside of Aaron Judge, there may have been no player more key to the success of the New York Yankees<\/a>‘ 2025 season than left-hander Max Fried.<\/p>\n

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After signing an eight-year, $218 million contract with the Yankees, Fried assumed the role of the ace of the pitching staff.<\/p>\n

“Fried was an All-Star for the third time in his career, won his fourth Gold Glove Award, and finished fourth in AL Cy Young Award voting after going 19-5 with a 2.86 ERA across a career-high 195.1 innings pitched,” Bleacher Report’s Tim Kelly wrote Thursday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“In a year where the Yankees didn’t have Gerrit Cole because he was recovering from Tommy John surgery, Fried stepped up and had a Cole-esque season.”<\/p>\n

Kelly gave the Yankees an A- grade for the Fried signing, though the 31-year-old did struggle in the ALDS.<\/p>\n

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Why didn’t Fried receive an A grade?<\/p>\n

Following a Game 1 loss in the ALDS against the Toronto Blue Jays<\/a>, the Yankees needed Fried to pitch like an ace on the road in Game 2.<\/p>\n

It didn’t work out as he or New York had hoped, as he allowed seven earned runs in three innings<\/a>. Fried hopes he can have improved outings in next year’s postseason, if the Yankees make it that far.<\/p>\n

Naturally, there are concerns about Fried’s ability to maintain a similar level of performance as he ages.<\/p>\n

“The only reason this is an A- as opposed to A or A+ is that Fried is entering his age-32 season and still has seven years left on his contract,” wrote Kelly. “There’s a chance that the end of this pact doesn’t go great, though the first season was tremendous.”<\/p>\n

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More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One year later: Yankees praised for Max Fried signing despite Blue Jays loss originally appeared on The Sporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2378],"tags":[106,5,377,2554,2281,4646,4,62,19915,282,70,2553],"class_list":["post-522191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto-blue-jays","tag-aaron-judge","tag-baseball","tag-blue-jays","tag-bluejays","tag-gerrit-cole","tag-max","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-tim-kelly","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-blue-jays","tag-torontobluejays"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}