By Ryan Bologna
Feb. 10, 2025
New York Sports Nation

When the New York Yan­kees lost Juan Soto to the New York Mets, they swift­ly piv­ot­ed and signed left-hand­ed start­ing pitch­er Max Fried to an eight-year, $218 mil­lion contract.

Oth­er notable moves, like acquir­ing Cody Bellinger, Devin Williams and Paul Gold­schmidt, were made to fill out the roster.

How­ev­er, Fried is eas­i­ly the most sig­nif­i­cant sign­ing for the Yan­kees this off­sea­son, and they are bet­ting on him to essen­tial­ly play the role of Robin to Ger­rit Cole as the No. 2 start­ing pitcher.

Fried is a bit of a unique pitch­er, so let’s take a deep dive into who Fried is and his out­look for 2025.

Fried comes to the Bronx after play­ing eight sea­sons with the Atlanta Braves. His career ERA+ mark of 140, accord­ing to Base­ball Ref­er­ence, puts him in the upper ech­e­lon of start­ing pitch­ers dur­ing his career. Fried, how­ev­er, achieves these great results in a dif­fer­ent way than oth­er top pitch­ers. For exam­ple, Corbin Burnes and Blake Snell, the oth­er two top start­ing pitch­ers who hit free agency this off­sea­son, have his­tor­i­cal­ly thrived by strik­ing out a lot of batters.

When look­ing at Fried’s Stat­cast num­bers, his chase rate (28.9%), whiff rate (24.1%), and strike­out rate (23.2%) all rank around aver­age. Not bad, but cer­tain­ly not his call­ing card. Fried is elite when it comes to aver­age exit veloc­i­ty (86.3 mph), bar­rel rate (5.0%), hard-hit rate (34.6%) and ground ball rate (59.2%). He was in the 95th per­centile for aver­age exit veloc­i­ty and the 96th per­centile for ground ball rate in 2024. In short, Fried lim­its hard con­tact and keeps the ball on the ground. That is usu­al­ly a good recipe.

When tak­ing this into account, it is easy to see why the Yan­kees have pri­or­i­tized defense this off­sea­son, espe­cial­ly in the infield. Gold­schmidt should be an upgrade at first base defen­sive­ly, and the depar­ture of Gley­ber Tor­res fits this mold as well. To max­i­mize the Yan­kees’ $218 mil­lion invest­ment in Fried, strong infield defense is a requirement.

Fried boasts a unique fast­ball, which moves in on right-hand­ed bat­ters. It aver­ages around 94 mph, so he does not rely on high veloc­i­ty. He also fea­tures a cut­ter, slid­er, curve­ball and change­up pre­dom­i­nant­ly. By not rely­ing much on veloc­i­ty and fea­tur­ing a diverse pitch mix, many believe that Fried could age well over the course of his contract.

In 2024, Fried did miss some time due to left fore­arm neu­ri­tis, which can be a pre­cur­sor to Tom­my John surgery. That is a con­cern, but Fried has been most­ly a reli­able pitch­er innings-wise in his career so far. In addi­tion, pitch­ers like Zack Wheel­er (2022) and Zac Gallen (2021) have suf­fered fore­arm injuries in the past with­out much fur­ther trou­ble since.

In 29 starts in 2024, Fried post­ed a 3.25 ERA, which is the high­est mark he has had since 2019, when he had a 4.02 ERA, accord­ing to Fan­Graphs. He had ERAs of 2.48 and 2.55 in 2022 and 2023.

The Yan­kees would sign up for that lev­el of per­for­mance from Fried in 2025, but there is rea­son to believe he could improve from last season.

Fried is usu­al­ly a slow starter, so in the first few games of his sea­son, he like­ly is not going to per­form at his peak. After return­ing from his fore­arm injury, Fried took some time to get back into form once again. Post­ing a 3.25 ERA despite those stretch­es is impressive.

In addi­tion to this, Fried’s change­up was not as good as it usu­al­ly is in 2024. Hit­ter had xwO­BA marks of .216, .206, and .213 against that pitch in 2021, 2022 and 2023, accord­ing to Stat­cast. In 2024, hit­ters had an xwO­BA of .286 against Fried’s change­up. If 2024 proves to be an out­lier and Fried regains the feel for his change­up that he had in pri­or sea­sons, his ERA could creep back towards 3.00.

As with any start­ing pitch­er the Yan­kees sign, there is a ques­tion of their fit in Yan­kee Sta­di­um. Luck­i­ly, Fried Tru­ist Park has a Park Fac­tor of 100 over the past three sea­sons, the exact same rat­ing as Yan­kee Sta­di­um. How­ev­er, Yan­kee Sta­di­um had a 119 home run fac­tor, as opposed to Tru­ist Park’s num­ber of 105.

It comes as no sur­prise that Yan­kee Sta­di­um is much more friend­ly for home runs, so Fried is like­ly to give up more than he has in the past. Still, the offen­sive envi­ron­ments are sim­i­lar over­all, and Fried’s skillset direct­ly com­bats the most hit­ter-friend­ly aspect of Yan­kee Stadium.

As dis­cussed above, Fried gen­er­ates a ton of soft con­tact and ground balls. That is a good way to avoid giv­ing up home runs in any ball­park. The num­bers back that up, as Fried’s HR/9 marks have been at 0.81, 0.58, 0.81 and 0.67 over the last four seasons.

Fried is still like­ly to give up more home runs than before, but when com­par­ing to the Yan­kees’ last big start­ing pitch­er sign­ing, Car­los Rodon, he is much bet­ter equipped to pitch in the Bronx. Rodon has HR/9 marks of 2.10 and 1.59 in his first two years with the Yan­kees, accord­ing to Fan­Graphs. He also had a ground ball rate of 34.6% in 2024, which was in the eighth per­centile in all of MLB. Fried is essen­tial­ly the oppo­site type of pitch­er as Rodon.

The Yan­kees are head­ing into 2025 with arguably the best pitch­ing staff they have had in a long time, and the addi­tion of Fried is arguably the biggest rea­son why.