PHILADELPHIA – Max Fried, in his eighth season, isn’t going to overreact to one poor outing. But it’s fair to acknowledge his season couldn’t have started much worse.
Fried, the Braves’ oh-so-reliable southpaw who started the clinching Game 6 of the 2021 World Series, took it on the chin Saturday against the Phillies. He faced seven hitters and recorded only two outs in the shortest outing of his career. Fortunately for him and his team, the Braves’ offense led them to a 12-4 victory.
But Fried’s outing was disastrous from a personal standpoint. It started with Kyle Schwarber’s single that left the bat at 80.3 mph. It continued with Fried at one point looking like a pretzel while attempting to field a foul ball. It ended with him recording just two outs, leaving the mound with his head hanging down, taunted by Philadelphia laughter.
“I definitely have a little bit more (perspective),” Fried told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I’d say that probably before, my confidence would be shot a little bit. But I’m confident in who I am as a pitcher and you’re not going to have your day all the time. It’s about how I handle tomorrow and what I’m going to be able to do to change that.”
How the unraveling occurred: After Schwarber’s single, Fried struck out Trea Turner before walking Bryce Harper. The Phillies executed a double steal as Fried’s command continued appearing errant. He walked J.T. Realmuto, loading the bases with one out.
Alec Bohm hit a foul ball off the dirt that Fried thought was fair. In attempting to field it, he fell awkwardly. He remained in the game after getting checked out.
“I just tried to stop and my cleat slid out from under me and I rolled up into a pretzel,” Fried said. “It was just a really weird, strange situation. Luckily, I didn’t hurt anything.”
First baseman Matt Olson made a nice catch on a softly struck ball from Bohm for the second out. Then came the next pivotal at-bat: Fried battled with Nick Castellanos and should’ve escaped the ugly frame unscathed.
Fried threw a 97.5-mph fastball down the strike zone’s upper-middle portion on the sixth pitch of the at-bat. Home plate umpire Bruce Dreckman deemed it a ball. While not excusing Fried’s performance, the call led to the inning’s only damage.
“Sometimes calls go your way, sometimes they don’t,” Fried said.
Fried threw a curveball in the dirt for ball four, scoring a run. Bryson Stott followed with a single that scored two more. Manager Brian Snitker saw enough, lifting Fried at 43 pitches (23 strikes).
It was Fried’s shortest outing since he lasted two innings against the Nationals on April 7, 2021. It was just the third time over the past three years that he didn’t complete five innings. This was the rarest of rare for Fried.
“He was just having trouble locating,” Snitker said. “It was just one of those days. It can happen and it did happen. Probably later in the year, you give him one more hitter to try to get out of there. … He wasn’t sharp. You get up to that many pitches in March and you’re not going to keep doing it (so we removed him).”
The subplot of Fried’s season is that it’s his contract year. It’s an unavoidable topic. As fans have learned over the past several seasons, an absence of an early extension likely means a player will leave the Braves in free agency, as was the case with Freddie Freeman and Dansby Swanson. So Fried’s performance will be under a microscope league-wide, too, given the stakes.
“It doesn’t matter,” Fried told The AJC. “I just have to go pitch. I have to go do my job. Anything outside of that doesn’t really matter.”
Fried will return to the mound hoping to rebound in the Braves’ home opener April 5 against the Diamondbacks.
