Max Fried has given rise to pitch-tipping speculation with his unsightly last couple of playoff outings. One former Atlanta Brave agrees with that notion.
Retired outfielder Matt Diaz, who played with the Braves for seven seasons, said Tuesday on SiriusXM’s MLB Network Radio that Fried has been tipping his pitches throughout the postseason.
“Against the Dodgers, I’m sitting on my couch calling every pitch he’s throwing,” said Diaz. “He was tipping against the Dodgers bad. And then against the Astros again, in the stretch, he was tipping a bit, and then he stopped … They corrected it. I think Fried is the right guy for Game 6.
“So against the Dodgers, it was in the pace of his flare,” Diaz added. “A lot of pitchers flare a changeup or flare a split … They flare the glove. So to combat that, pitchers wiggle their glove while they’re coming set. Well, Max’s was certainly in the pace while he was coming set. How fast he was wiggling it versus how slow he was wiggling it. It was pretty adept.”
Fried, who posted a 3.04 ERA in the regular season, was uncharacteristically bad in his last two playoff starts. He gave up a combined 10 earned runs in 9.2 innings pitched, and the Braves lost both games.
As Diaz hinted at, Fried now gets the nod for the Braves in Tuesday’s Game 6 of the World Series. Hopefully Fried has indeed corrected his pitch-tipping issue, as even the viewers at home seemed to notice that something was up.
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