Home Baseball Max Fried frustrated by rough outing in Yankees’ Game 2 loss

Max Fried frustrated by rough outing in Yankees’ Game 2 loss

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TORONTO — The dejected face of — perched on the top railing of the first-base dugout at Rogers Centre by early in the fourth inning on Sunday evening — said it all.

The Yankees’ left-handed ace glumly looked on as the Blue Jays’ offense kept pouring it on.

Fried aimed to lead a bounce-back showing for the Yanks, one that could have evened the American League Division Series before it shifted to New York. Instead, an uncharacteristic start by the 31-year-old southpaw became a reason for Toronto’s 13-7 win that pushed its advantage in the series to 2-0.

Fried wanted to get the Yanks in a better position. Instead, their season will be on the line in Tuesday’s Game 3, as the Bronx Bombers will need to reel off three straight wins to move on.

“I didn’t get it done,” said Fried, who allowed seven runs over three-plus innings. “It’s frustrating, especially coming out in a game like this. I needed to have a good one.”

The Yankees’ offense unsurprisingly had a tough time against Blue Jays rookie phenom Trey Yesavage, a hard-throwing right-hander with a nasty splitter making his fourth MLB start. The 22-year-old racked up 11 strikeouts over 5 1/3 hitless innings, as New York’s bats didn’t get going until it eventually cracked into Toronto’s bullpen.

It was Fried’s job to keep the Yanks in the game early. However, the Blue Jays already had a 5-0 lead by the time the lefty departed with no outs in the fourth.

The trouble started in the bottom of the second, which Daulton Varsho began with a double. Then, Ernie Clement opened the scoring with a two-run home run, sending the Rogers Centre crowd into an early frenzy for the second consecutive day.

Toronto strung together an impressive rally in the third, plating runs on a groundout by Alejandro Kirk, another double by Varsho and a single from Clement.

In the fourth, Fried yielded a single to Andrés Giménez and walked Myles Straw, departing after throwing his 51st pitch. Giménez and Straw later scored on Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s grand slam off Will Warren that gave the Blue Jays a 9-0 lead to bust the game open.

“He didn’t seem to have the same command. Probably not getting pitches to where he wanted to get them. Life and everything seemed fine,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said of Fried. “They obviously had some hard contact. They were able to find some holes with their contact. Just not his sharpest, obviously.”

Fried later agreed with that sentiment. In fact, the lefty’s velocity was up across the board, with his sinker maxing out at 99.2 mph — a heater thrown to Kirk in the third that marked Fried’s fastest pitch of the season and matched the hardest of his career (with the previous coming on July 30, 2020, while with the Braves).

The rest of Fried’s six-pitch arsenal also looked as usual. Yet Toronto tagged him for eight hits and a pair of walks while striking out only once.

“They obviously had a really good approach. They were on a lot of my pitches, and credit to them,” Fried said. “I felt like I was mixing a lot of different fastballs, and when I threw the offspeed, they seemed to be on it, too. I pride myself in being able to change speeds and keep guys off balance, and they weren’t off balance.”

It was only the sixth time a Yankees starting pitcher has allowed seven earned runs or more in a postseason start, and the first since right-hander Phil Hughes yielded seven over four innings in Game 2 of the 2010 AL Championship Series — a 7-2 loss to the Rangers.

“We talked about kind of trying to grind [Fried] a bit,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “I thought our at-bats were tremendous against him. He’s one of the best in the league. Kind of just took what we got, you know?”

Fried doesn’t typically have this type of outing. His seven earned runs allowed matched the high for his nine-year, 222-game MLB career (regular season and postseason combined), a mark he reached only three previous times.

This past December, the Yankees signed Fried to an eight-year, $218 million deal — the largest given to a left-handed pitcher in MLB history — to be a co-ace with Gerrit Cole. Fried took on the role alone after Cole underwent Tommy John surgery on March 11, going on to post a 19-5 record with a 2.86 ERA over 32 starts.

A three-time All-Star and a perennial Cy Young Award contender, Fried delivered in his first playoff outing for the Yankees, tossing 6 1/3 scoreless innings in Game 1 of the AL Wild Card Series vs. the Red Sox. Yet New York took a 3-1 loss, necessitating back-to-back wins to extend its season (which it accomplished).

With the Yankees now in a similar position — albeit one that’s a bit more challenging — Fried again has faith in his teammates around him to stay alive.

“We believe in each other in here,” Fried said. “We’re a good team. Two games doesn’t mean anything. We still have the ability to go out there and win three in a row and win the series. So you’ve still got to believe.”

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