Max Fried’s Struggles Could Derail Yankees’ Playoff Rotation Plans

Remember when Max Fried looked like a Cy Young candidate? Yeah, that feels like a long time ago.

Since mid-June, the Yankees’ ace has looked ordinary at best, unrecognizable at worst. Saturday in St. Louis was the latest example. He allowed seven runs for only the third time in his career. With Ben Rice driving in seven runs, the Yankees were able to out-power the Cardinals 12-8 to give Fried a win. 

Baseball Savant shows just how hittable he’s become. 

Opponents are posting an 87.3 mph average exit velocity against him, with a 38.6 percent hard-hit rate. That’s not the profile of the ace he once was; it’s the profile of someone leaving way too many pitches in the zone.

FanGraphs splits tell the bigger story. 

Through June, Fried owned a 1.92 ERA, the kind of number that put him in the thick of the Cy Young conversation. Since then, he’s carried a 6.00 ERA over his last seven starts. Three of those outings have ended with four or more runs allowed, and Saturday in St. Louis was his worst yet.

The problems are easy to spot.

His strikeouts are down, his walks are up, and his fastball command has gone missing. The four-seamer is getting hammered, and his curveball, the pitch that once made hitters buckle, isn’t fooling anyone. What was crisp and deceptive in April is now predictable.

"It's frustrating. I definitely have to change something and change it quick," Fried said. "We were lucky they put up 12 runs, but going forward, I've got to be better."

For the Yankees, that’s the nightmare scenario, but manager Aaron Boone said that there is nothing "alarming" in his underlying numbers.

Fried was supposed to anchor a rotation already stripped of Gerrit Cole and Clarke Schmidt. Instead, Boone has to worry about getting quality innings from him down the stretch. 

The Yankees don’t just need Fried to find himself again. They need him to flip the switch back to ace mode. Because if this version sticks around, October won’t last very long.

"He'll get through it," Boone said. "He's fighting through it."