Key Free Agent Signing Max Fried Paying Early Dividends For Yankees

Obviously, the loss of Juan Soto to the crosstown rival Mets was the largest development of the offseason for the Yankees. The pain of that loss has been significantly mitigated by the strong early performance of the club’s largest free agent pickup of its own, lefthanded starting pitcher Max Fried.

The Yanks inked the long-time Braves’ ace to an eight-year, $218 million deal that will take Fried through his age 38 season. His first seven starts with his new club have been nothing short of brilliant – his record stands at 6-0, 1.01, with a 39/11 K/BB ratio and only 31 hits allowed in 44 2/3 innings.

Sure, it’s early, and the weather has yet to warm up and the ball hasn’t started to fly, but that’s impressive on multiple levels. Heck, if you weed everything else out and simply look at that AL-leading innings total you can appreciate what he’s meant to the Yankees.

But it is still early, and the top-line numbers can be very deceiving. Thus, let’s dig through some of Fried’s past and present numbers to see what he has been, what he is and what he might be becoming.

Fried has made his major league bones by minimizing walks, inducing tons of ground balls and muting contact authority of all batted ball types. Some elite hurlers are great because they miss tons of bats, others because of extreme contact management ability. Only the very best, Zack Wheeler, for example, do both consistently. Fried is a top-shelf contact manager.

His very best season in Atlanta was 2022, when he was NL Contact Manager of the Year with a 78 Adjusted Contact Score, driving a 69 “Tru” ERA-, equal to his FIP- and slightly worse than his 60 ERA-. My batted ball-based method saw him as the 4th best starter in the league that season. After he was limited by a forearm strain in 2023, he wasn’t quite as good in 2024, with his walk rate almost doubling and his Adjusted Contact Score rising to 89, and his “Tru”- climbing to 84, again even with his FIP- and a little worse than his 78 ERA-. Still, he limited contact authority quite well and came in 10th in my rankings of qualifying NL starting pitchers.

Each season I grade all the pitches of starting pitchers who threw 135 or more innings based on their bat-missing and contact management performance relative to the league. In both seasons, Fried had five qualifying pitches – his changeup, curve, four-seamer, sinker and slider. All five pitches received an average “B” grade or better in both seasons – Fried has a very high floor.

His ceiling isn’t bad, either. In 2022, his sinker got an “A+” and his changeup and curve received “A” grades. All three were markedly above average contact management offerings, while the sinker had a markedly above average whiff rate as well. He didn’t get any “A” grades in 2024, but his four-seamer and sinker both got “B+” grades. with the strong contact management performance of the former pitch most notable.

His overall swing-and-miss rate did drop from 12.0% in 2022 to 10.2% in 2024. Some of the pitch-specific whiff rate drops were quite significant – the changeup plunged from 18.9% to 11.9%, the sinker dropped from 9.1% to 5.8% and the curve from 16.4% to 14.1%. This was offset by a solid whiff rate jump from 6.7% to 8.2% for his four-seamer.

So let’s peel some layers back from Fried’s early 2025 performance to see if he’s regained his 2022 form, gotten even better, or isn’t as good as his mainstream numbers.

Bottom line – Max Fried is good, but there’s quite a bit of good fortune contributing to his current stat line. Here are some key points:

UNEARNED RUNS

Not much statistical analysis needed here. Fried has given up 10 runs this season – and half have been unearned. There have already been eight errors on batted balls against Fried this season – that’s more than a season’s worth for many starting pitchers. Now he’s a groundballer, for sure, but this is still extreme.

K RATE DROP

Fried’s K rate was 23.2% in both 2022 and 2024, and is down to 21.5% in the early going this season. This has been offset a bit by a drop in his BB rate from 8.0% to 6.1% (it was 4.4% in 2022).

In addition, his swing-and-miss rate has dropped to a career low 9.0%, with sharp drops in his offspeed pitches’ pitch-specific rates offset by rises from his four-seamer and sinker. Bizarrely, only one pitch – his changeup, at 10.1% – has a double-digit whiff rate.

INCREASED BATTED BALL AUTHORITY ALLOWED

Not only was Fried’s overall exit speed allowed over a full standard deviation lower than league average in both 2022 and 2024, his average exit speed allowed for each batted ball type was never above league average, and for flies and liners, were well lower in both seasons. In 2025, he is allowing harder than average fly ball (91.8 mph) and line drive (95.2 mph) contact.

Add it all up, and Fried’s Adjusted Contact Score of 81 is basically in line with career norms, but way higher than his 52 unadjusted mark. His “Tru”- of 78 is higher than his 69 FIP- and on a different than his 26 ERA-.

There are a couple of other worrisome numbers. He’s yielded an unrealistically low 13.4% liner rate so far. That will regress upward. Plus, his 33.8% fly ball rate allowed is a career high. He’ll need to reduce his average fly ball exit speed allowed before the weather warms up and makes him pay.

Max Fried is good, and the start of his Yankee career is off to a rousing start. He and Aaron Judge have obscured many of the club’s deficiencies. But he is not as good as his mainstream numbers indicate, and in fact there are worrisome warts on his record that could cause his “Tru”- to climb as the season unfolds.