Just as the chorus of worry was about to reach a crescendo, Max Fried turned his season around. He began his Yankees tenure on an unbelievable heater, going 10-2 with a 1.92 ERA and 2.81 FIP through his first 17 starts, inserting his name onto the shortlists for All-Star Game starter and the AL Cy Young. But then came an ugly stretch from July 1st through August 16th, Fried going 3-3 with a 6.80 ERA and 4.63 FIP in eight starts. This regression along with struggles from every other member in the rotation
were a primary factor in the team playing to a losing record for much of the summer. Fortunately for the Yankees, Fried found the requisite fix and has now made three straight starts of at least six innings allowing four hits and one or fewer runs in each — good for a 0.90 ERA and 2.69 FIP.
His latest start saw him complete seven innings of one-run ball to spearhead the series-opening victory over the Astros. The fifth inning was the best showcase of the adjustments he’s made to get his season back on track, Fried striking out three in a row after issuing a leadoff walk.
The middle of those strikeouts earns mention on Sequence of the Week. César Salazar steps to the plate having reached on a hit-by-pitch in the third.
Fried starts Salazar off with a first pitch slider after hitting him with a first pitch sinker his first time up.
Fried hangs this one right down the middle, but gets bailed out as Salazar is guessing fastball. He swings early and is unable to keep it fair as he pulls it down the first base line. That’s the benefit of being unpredictable on first pitch — this slider comes in four mph slower than the sinker Salazar got hit with, and the hitter is unable to adjust the timing of his swing.
Reading how early Salazar was with that swing, Fried sees an opportunity to slow his bat down even further with a slower curveball.
It’s a perfect pitch, the curveball hanging in the zone for the majority of its journey toward home plate before falling off the table. The larger amount of downward break and slower velocity than the slider have Salazar completely fooled, and he misses this pitch by a mile with another early swing. You can see how having multiple breaking balls in your arsenal with divergent velocities and movement profiles makes the task so difficult for the hitter.
Now that he has thrown two straight breakers for strikes, Fried sees if he can sneak an 0-2 fastball by Salazar, hoping that his bat is slowed down sufficiently that he won’t be able to speed back up to the heater.
Unfortunately for Fried, he overthrows this four-seamer and yanks it out of the zone away as he tries to squeeze a few extra drops of velo out of the pitch, making for an easy take from Salazar.
The nice thing about pitching from an 0-2 count is that you have several bullets to retire the hitter. The count leverage is still firmly in Fried’s behavior despite the poorly executed four-seamer, and he decides to stick with the fastball — Salazar hasn’t swung at a heater yet this game and Fried is banking that he hasn’t adjusted his timing.
This time, Fried opts for the sinker instead of the four-seamer and it proves an inspired decision. Not only is it perfectly located on the corner low and away, the foot more downward movement it exhibits relative to the four-seamer is what keeps it off Salazar’s barrel. Salazar is on time with his hack, but swings as if it is another four-seamer, the sinker instead darting beneath his bat as he pounds it into the dirt at home plate foul.
Perhaps Fried and Wells sense that Salazar has matched his timing to the fastball, because they switch back to the breaking stuff as they hunt the strikeout.
Talk about making the hitter look silly. This is what they call a “sword,” Salazar waving lazily over this sweeper that practically ends up in the opposite batter’s box. This pitch has way more horizontal break than the slider and curveball, so even if Salazar had correctly diagnosed breaking ball out of the hand (which he clearly did not), there is still a wide area of coverage that the ball could land based on the different breaking profiles of those three pitches.
Here’s the full sequence:
Speaking to reporters following his recent win over the Nationals, Fried stressed the importance that varying his pitch mix has had in getting his performances back to the level at the start of the season.
Fried became a little too cutter-dependent over the summer months, and hitters began to sit on the pitch. This particular AB encapsulates the adjustment we can see Fried made at the start of August. Fried threw five different pitches to Salazar, and at no point did the hitter look comfortable in the AB. It seemed like Fried was always a pitch ahead of Salazar, who never appeared likely to match swing timing with pitch movement tracking. The ability and confidence to use all of the pitches across his broad arsenal is what turned Fried’s season around and will continue to catalyze success down the back stretch and hopefully into a deep playoff run.
