MILWAUKEE – Max Fried was put on notice immediately on Friday night – he was going to need his best stuff on the mound.
His counterpart – Brewers phenom Jacob Misiorowski – set down the Yankees' first three hitters with some of the fastest pitches ever seen in the pitch-tracking era (since 2008). It was going to be an uphill battle for New York’s offense, so Fried could ill afford significant struggles.
Come the second inning, that’s exactly what he ran into.
Fried was undone by a pair of walks and loads of soft contact during a frame in which every Milwaukee hitter came to the plate. The Yankees’ left-hander allowed four singles and four runs in the second despite not allowing a single hard-hit ball. And after logging 40 pitches in the frame, he departed the mound having put New York in a 4-0 hole.
Though the second inning turned out to be Fried’s only true blemish, the deficit proved too much for the Yankees’ bats to overcome as they fell, 6-0, in the series opener at American Family Field.
“Walked two guys pretty uncompetitively, and then just wasn’t able to stop the bleeding,” Fried said. “I needed to be able to come through, and [I] wasn’t able to.”
It was quite a surprising outcome considering how well Fried’s night started. Though he wasn’t able to match Misiorowski in terms of velocity, he still worked through the first inning on an efficient nine pitches. For a moment, it seemed the table was set for an old-fashioned pitchers’ duel.
But while Misiorowski continued blowing away Yankee hitters with triple-digit heat, Fried quickly lost the strike zone.
After opening the second by allowing a soft single from Gary Sánchez, Fried walked Andrew Vaughn and Luis Rengifo on eight consecutive pitches. Weak singles from Brandon Lockridge and Sal Frelick quickly put Milwaukee on the board with a pair of runs.
After allowing a run-scoring forceout, Fried got Jackson Chourio to hit a soft grounder right back to the pitcher’s mound. The four-time Gold Glove Award-winning pitcher initially made a motion to go after the ball, then pulled back in order to avoid any deflection that could interrupt an inning-ending double play. But the ball instead rolled into the outfield for another RBI single.
Fried finished the frame having thrown the second-most pitches he has ever logged in a single inning. The only time he has thrown more was during a March 30, 2024, start for the Braves against the Phillies in which he threw 43 pitches and lasted just two-thirds of an inning.
But even though manager Aaron Boone had begun warming up a reliever near the end of the second, Fried insisted he was still willing to give everything he had left.
“At that point I came in and I told Boonie, ‘As many as you need me to go,’” Fried said. “You give up that many runs, it’s, ‘How deep in the game can you go from there?’”
The answer to that, despite hitting the 50-pitch mark on his first offering in the third, was four more innings. Fried logged back-to-back 10-pitch frames in the fourth and fifth, giving the New York bullpen a much-needed breather after it was overworked on Thursday when original starter Ryan Weathers was scratched due to a viral infection.
“That’s an ace for you,” Boone said. “To have that kind of an inning and be able to give us six, those are big. ... Max even wanted to go out there for more after the six. Good job by him of rallying and getting us deeper into that game.”
But while Fried was able to course-correct, New York’s offense never could against Misiorowski. The second-year hurler consistently had Yankees hitters whiffing, hitting at least 103 mph with his four-seamer 10 times on the night. Spencer Jones, the Yanks’ No. 6 prospect making his MLB debut, was greeted with a 103.6 mph fastball on the first offering he saw in the bigs.
“I’ve never seen pitches that hard in my life,” Jones said. “To foul off a couple is pretty great, so I’ll take that for now.”
It was a silver lining on a night when there weren’t many to be had. One of them, though, was Fried’s willingness to keep battling even after an inning that effectively put the game out of reach.
“That’s the least I could do at that point,” Fried said. “When you have a 40-pitch inning and you give up four runs and you go down early, that’s really the only thing you can do.”