Max Fried off to Historic Start with Yankees

It’s become too large a sample size to overlook.

How Max Fried, in his first year with the New York Yankees, has carved up lineups over the first third of the season has been not just remarkable, but, in many ways, unprecedented.

After an inauspicious start to his Yankee career when he failed to make it out of the fifth inning during a bizarre March 29 game against the Milwaukee Brewers in which New York clubbed a franchise-record nine homers in a 20-9 win, the one-time Brave has been untouchable, allowing merely eight earned runs across 10 starts. With a 7-0 record and 1.29 ERA following his six-hit masterpiece against the Colorado Rockies this past weekend, the two-time All-Star and ace of the Braves’ 2021 world championship team has thus far justified the Yankees’ decision to outspend the competition last winter when it offered him an eight-year, $218 million contract, the largest ever issued to a left-handed pitcher.

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Though other American League pitchers such as Kansas City’s Kris Bubic and Texas’ Tyler Mahle are having banner seasons, Fried’s immaculate record and phenomenal ERA and strikeout/walk ratio position the cerebral, slick-fielding southpaw to be the likely starter for the American League All-Stars during the July 15th Midsummer Classic at Truist Park — assuming, of course, he continues to evade injuries, his well-established kryptonite through the years.

After tossing seven innings of one-hit ball against Tampa Bay on May 2 that lowered his ERA to 1.01 — the lowest in Yankees history through a pitcher’s first seven starts with the team — Fried was asked how he’s been able to make such a seamless transition to a new team, to which he responded, “I’ve got great teammates. They have welcomed me since day one in the spring. Just being able to go out there and develop those relationships and then being able to know that those guys have my back out there, it just makes my job way easier.”

Though starting the All-Star Game in his former home (just three days before the Yankees are in town for a weekend series) and copping his first-ever Cy Young appear plausible, such accolades perhaps can’t fully demonstrate the utter dominance of Fried’s debut Yankee season. Consider that during the final game of a recent series against the crosstown Mets, the 31-year-old had a brilliant outing — fanning eight and yielding two earned runs over a six-inning no-decision — but it actually raised his MLB-best ERA to 1.29, from 1.11.

Being able to know that those guys have my back out there, it just makes my job way easier.

“He’s like a race car out there,” New York manager Aaron Boone remarked about his ace after the Yanks took the rubber game from Steve Cohen’s Mets, 8-2, on May 18. “He’s just hard to get a beat on, because he’s just changing speeds and getting so much movement quality on all his pitches.”

The start against the Mets on ESPN at an electric sold-out Yankee Stadium — afterwards Fried remarked, “It was definitely exciting. It was intense. Series that feel like playoff series are always good, especially early in the year. It preps you for the kind of baseball you want to play towards the end.” — was Fried’s tenth this spring. Coincidentally, the only Yankee hurler who registered a superior ERA to Fried’s 1.29 over his first 10 starts was the great Phil Niekro, who began his first season (1984) in the Bronx with a 1.20 ERA after coming over from Atlanta.

However, the future Hall of Famer would peak in April and May in his first year away from the Braves’ organization, finishing with a solid, though not spectacular, 16-8 record and 3.09 ERA. Should Fried maintain this torrid pace through the balance of the regular season — or at least not regress too much over the final two/thirds — the body of work could potentially even be compared to the greatest season of his childhood idol, Sandy Koufax, who finished off his Hall of Fame career by posting a 27-9 record and 1.73 ERA for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1966.

He’s like a race car out there.

The Koufax comparisons may seem premature — after all, the season is barely two months old — but it’s hard not to resort to hyperbole when analyzing Fried’s first year in Pinstripes. Though Fried’s fastball is not overpowering, at least by today’s lofty standards, opposing lineups remain flummoxed by a seven-pitch repertoire that most prominently features a devastating curveball. The versatility and shiftiness continue to induce an overwhelming number of weak groundouts while, as of press time, only three batters have cleared the fence against him. All told, even if Fried’s 2025 season doesn’t go down as one of the all-time great campaigns for a starting pitcher, it projects to be his personal best, even more impressive than his Cy Young runner-up 2022 season when he registered a 2.48 ERA.

As for what Fried’s career year means to a Yankees team, whose expected ace, Gerrit Cole, suffered a season-ending elbow injury in spring training, it doesn’t seem far-fetched to believe their marquee free-agent acquisition may very well be the reason the storied franchise is expected to once again play October baseball.

As Fried remarked during his introductory press conference back in December: “I love playoff baseball, and I love to be able to have meaningful baseball at the end of the year and the Yankees are an organization that are going to do that year in and year out.”