And on the third start did his ERA rise. Yes, Max Fried finally allowed a man to score, indeed early in Sunday’s rain-delayed series finale with the Marlins. The game started three and a half hours after the scheduled first pitch time, and maybe that delay took a little off Fried’s game. His control wasn’t sparkling, but the Yankee offense was able to pick up for that early snafu…but the bullpen couldn’t hold up their end of the bargain. The Yankees have lost for the second time this year, 7-6 your
final.
Naturally it was old friend Austin Slater — er, old acquaintance —, he of the sub-.100 OPS, that reached in the first and came around to score, the first such player to do so against Fried in 2026. Nobody is going to be on it every single day, but you could tell that for the second time in three starts Fried wasn’t quite what you’d expect him to be, especially with his fastball offerings:
There’s far more easy takes here than we’re used to seeing with Fried, and when he uses his fastball early in counts to set up the four other, more “junky” pitches he uses later in the count, throwing fastballs for balls gets him into 1-0 or 2-1 holes, rather than spotting himself an early strike. We then are left with hitters in hitters’ counts and throwing more pitches than we’d like to see.
The Marlins got to Fried twice more in his outing, and were on the verge of tying things up when home plate umpire Manny Gonzalez calling Marlin Connor Norby safe on a contact play at home. Fortunately we have the benefit of review:
If nothing else the Yankees can return their own firepower, and Ben Rice was able to do just that in the bottom half of the first:
Rice’s all-world contact quality also helped the Yankees push across what would be a very needed insurance run, this time in the third inning with two men on once again:
No RBI here for Rice, but if that ball’s not 98 off the bat, maybe Norby is able to handle it cleaner and get off a better throw. Hit ball hard, good things happen.
That wouldn’t be enough for a contact-heavy Marlins team to overcome though. The Fish walked twice before Griffin Conine was hit by a pitch in the eighth, and Jake Bird couldn’t bear down. Graham Pauley’s double gave Miami the lead, and Xavier Edwards welcomed Ryan Yarbrough to the game with a two-run single of his own.
Ryan McMahon actually had himself a decent day at the plate, with a hit and a walk to reach twice. That was welcome because the rest of the bottom half of the order was bowling shoe ugly.
That same 6-9 entered the ninth with the score 7-4. Grisham, Judge, Rice and Giancarlo Stanton have all had strong starts to the year, but that’s still only half a lineup. The Yankees need more out of their depth bats, and while Jazz Chisholm Jr. is a better player than he’s shown, maybe this is why we don’t brag about going 50/50 in the offseason. Perhaps that pressure finally came to a head for Jazz, whose big two-run double down to the final strike of the game may be what shakes him out of this early-season slump:
That would be as good as it gets, as Austin Wells was intentionally walked and J.C. Escarra would be sat down on three pitches. Game over.
We haven’t had many of these games this year, and while it did come on a day the rest of the AL East was also slapped around, if the club goes 4-2 every week for the rest of the season we’ll end things just fine. If nothing else hopefully our upcoming series with the Athletics won’t involve multiple three-hour slogs, but will feature the same end result or better. Cam Schlittler gets the ball Tuesday night, with a 7:05pm Eastern start time.
