Despite taking a bit of a back seat to Chris Sale in the Atlanta rotation, 2024 ended up a very lucrative walk year for Max Fried.
2024 was a weird year for countless reasons that have been well-documented in this review series thus far, and Max Fried was certainly not exempt from the weirdness. After a start to the year where he could go quite literally nowhere but up, he (mostly) settled in and became the pitcher Braves fans knew and loved. But, between the performances of some of his rotation mates and the question marks surrounding his impending free agency, the vibes were, well, off.
How Acquired
As we all probably know by now, Fried was acquired as the Braves won the Justin Upton trade with the Padres in 2014, debuted in 2017, and has been a mainstay in the Atlanta rotation since 2019. After a whimper of what turned out to be his last outing as a Brave (against, poetically, the Padres) in this year’s Wild Card round, Fried became one of the top free agents on the market this winter.
What were the expectations?
Fried had an injury-riddled 2023 and missed a bunch of time with a forearm strain, so his 2024 expectations may have been a little tempered on paper. Our 2023 review of him noted that “Steamer currently has him at 3.5 WAR over 185 innings, which seems very reasonable—though it’s worth noting that Fried’s pitched much better than that on a rate basis in each of the past four seasons, and there’s some regression to the mean which may or may not transpire in play here.”
As a side note, after the chaos that ended up being 2024, one of my favorite games of this offseason has been to look back at the outlooks we wrote last year and see how far off we were—here, I’d offered that “if [Fried] can regain his 2022 form, he and Strider will make quite the one-two punch, in whatever order you so choose.” Chris Sale and Reynaldo López would obviously like a word, please.
2024 Results
2024 ended up being a good year for Fried, albeit bookended by some truly forgettable outings. When it was all said and done, he made 29 regular season starts, hurled 171 1⁄3 innings, and totaled 3.4 fWAR with a 78 ERA-, 84 FIP-, and 82 xFIP-. Considering he came into the season with a 70/78/79 career line, he basically had a slightly worse 2024 than his body of work to date.
He was also one of three Braves pitchers, along with Sale and López, to be named 2024 All-Stars when he earned a very last-minute spot in replacement of Ranger Suárez. It was Fried’s second All-Star nod, and he pitched a scoreless frame with an infield full of Phillies behind him.
He also, against all 2024 odds, only faced one Injured List stint, with left forearm neuritis earning him a spot on the 15-day list on July 21. He later revealed that he had felt off while warming up for the All-Star Game but pitched through it, which was less than ideal, but he ended up being able to return on time and finish out the season with no further arm-related incidents. The Braves probably could’ve used a healthier Fried down the stretch than the NL All-Stars needed an inning from him in the Midsummer Classic, but what’s done is done.
What went right
As it always seems to ring true with Fried, when he was on, he was on. After a rocky start, there was a stint of six starts spanning from April 23 to May 22 during which he tossed 42 1⁄3 innings, including a Maddux and another complete game, and posted a 41/74/76 line.
He kept the hot streak going in his next start against the Nationals on May 28, when he tossed eight scoreless frames and notched career strikeout no. 750 as one of his six on the night. That was his best start of the year on a WPA basis, as seven of those scoreless frames came in a tie game, and the eighth after the Braves had taken a 2-0 lead; Raisel Iglesias slammed the door.
The strikeouts would continue to factor in his June 4 start in Boston, when he struck out a career-high 13 batters in another effective seven innings of work in an 8-3 win. All in all, an eight-start stretch from late April to early June featured a 38/69/70 line and was one of the last truly dominant stretches Braves fans will have seen from Fried.
Worth noting (knowing what we now know), Fried made his first career appearance at Yankee Stadium on June 23 in a hot, getaway day 3-1 win to seal a series victory in the Bronx.
Returning home to Truist, he outdueled Paul Skenes on June 29, with a six-inning, one-run performance that ended in a 2-1 Braves win, and he posted a very similar line to finish out the first half two starts later in Arizona, but that ended in a 1-0 loss. 2024!!
After returning from the IL in early August, he made 11 starts in the second half, four of which he went at least seven innings in and nine of which he earned decisions in, but none were as important or as meaningful as his last, which proved to be his swan song as a Brave in Atlanta. It was September 27 against the Royals, and Fried was locked in. He spun a scoreless, nine-strikeout performance and almost went the distance for a third time in 2024 but was instead pulled at 8 2⁄3 innings with runners on second and third and was met with a well-earned standing ovation.
That capped a really good month of September, where Fried had a 51/59/63 line in aggregate.
What went wrong
Fried’s start to the year was…bad. I remember a minor celebration when his ERA dipped below 20—yes, 20.00—in his second start, and I was sitting in person at Truist at the end of May when it finally hit the sub-3.00 mark during the middle of that hot streak.
He didn’t even make it out of the first inning in his first outing, the second game of the year in Philadelphia. He exited after throwing 43 pitches in just 2/3rds of an inning, giving up three runs on two hits and three walks. The Braves went on to win that one, 12-4, but a 40.50 ERA and 13.67 FIP to start the year for a guy was not what anyone was expecting.
His second start of the year, April 6 against the Diamondbacks, wasn’t a whole lot better, though he did make it out of the first inning—barely. In that outing, over 4 1⁄3 innings, he was charged with eight runs (seven earned) on ten hits, and six of those runs were plated in the first frame. Again, the Braves came from behind to take the game, 9-8, but it surely was not the start Fried was looking for to kick off his free agency campaign.
He finally settled in, for the most part, but did have a few more clunkers as the year went on, including a five-run, 11-hit loss against the Phillies on July 5, and his first game off the IL against Miami on August 4. He didn’t make a rehab start before that, so it could be chalked up to rust, but he only lasted 3 1⁄3 innings and gave up five runs on four hits and a season-high five walks.
Rust or not, the walks were an uncharacteristic kryptonite for Fried in 2024, as his 57 marked the highest amount he’s allowed in his entire career, with the next highest being 47 in 2019, his first full year as a starter. For comparison, in 2022, his last All-Star year and the year he was the Cy Young runner up, he only allowed 32 total walks in 11 more innings pitched than in 2024. It was his worst walk rate and K%-BB% season since the shortened 2020 campaign, and given how cerebral Fried is as a pitcher, it’s a little surprising that he had an elevated (for him, not really in general) walk rate in a campaign where pitchers faced less of a penalty for giving up contact than in many years before.
Of course, Fried’s last outing in a Braves uniform was not what anyone, him included, would’ve hoped. It started off precariously ok, as he got out of a bases-loaded jam unscathed in the first inning, but it fell apart in the second. He exited after having being charged with five runs on six hits—if you consider some of that soft contact a hit—in the frame. He was hit in the backside by a Fernando Tatis Jr. comebacker in the first, and it apparently tightened up on him, which was the cherry on top of the injury cake this year. In the end, Fried lasted just two frames in the game, and had a really stupid 22.50 ERA and 7.67 FIP in the game… with a 2.68 xFIP. Yeah.
It’s a shame he had to go out like that, but at least his last home start was one worth remembering.
2025 Outlook
Blake Snell set the tone for the pitching market early when he signed a five-year, $182 million dollar deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers in late November. While a very select few of us (ok, maybe it was just my own delusional wishful thinking) thought that this could be the time that Alex Anthopoulos would buck his trend of letting big Atlanta free agents walk, it was not to be. On December 10, during the Winter Meetings, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported that Fried had agreed to an eight-year, $218 million deal with the New York Yankees, good for the largest contract for a left-handed pitcher in Major League history. The deal was made official on December 17, and Fried, while continuing to wear no. 54 in the Bronx, and Gerrit Cole figure to be quite the duo at the top of the New York rotation. Steamer currently projects Fried to cover 173 innings over 29 starts and post a 3.34 ERA, 3.48 FIP, and 3.3 WAR in the process; ZiPS is right there too with a 3.5 WAR central projection over 161 innings.
For now, though, all the best to Max Fried. Thank you for everything, and can’t wait to see you back at Truist in July!