TAMPA, Fla. -- In Max Fried’s mind, Game 2 of the American League Division Series still hasn’t ended.
It followed him through the offseason -- into each weight-room set, every sweat-drenched mound session. It could have been November or December, but the scene replayed the same way: the Blue Jays hanging a seven-spot on the Yankees left-hander and sending him to a fourth-inning shower.
Fried took a loss that night at Rogers Centre. What he carried home was something else -- fuel.
“Every time that I get to the gym or I pick up a ball, anything I have to do with baseball, it’s definitely a motivating factor,” Fried said. “You want to always keep getting better, learn from your mistakes and make sure that you’re not making the same mistakes again. I’m just trying to remember that feeling.”
As Fried prepares for his second season in pinstripes, the 32-year-old has little interest in celebrating the positives of Year 1. There were plenty: across 32 starts, he led the Majors with 19 wins against five losses, a .792 winning percentage that paced the American League.
Arriving in New York amid concerns about his durability after a brilliant but interrupted tenure with the Braves, Fried said one of his goals was to be ready each fifth day. He certainly was, making a career-high 32 starts and registering a new high-water mark of 195 1/3 innings.
His only hiccup was a blister issue that may have been responsible for a summer swoon, though Fried refuses to lean on it as an excuse. His accountability and competitiveness have made the 32-year-old a favorite for manager Aaron Boone.
“His performance speaks for itself, but who he is immediately fit in really well with these guys,” Boone said. “There’s a humility to him for being a great player. In short order, he became a really important part of our culture.”
When the Yankees signed Fried to an eight-year, $218 million contract in December 2024, pivoting swiftly after Juan Soto accepted a larger offer from the Mets, general manager Brian Cashman envisioned Fried pairing with Gerrit Cole atop the rotation for years to come.
That vision didn’t even make it to Grapefruit League play. Cole was lost for the season to Tommy John surgery last March, leaving Fried to shoulder much of the load without the AL’s 2023 Cy Young Award winner.
Now, as Cole tosses from bullpen mounds and runs warning track laps in preparation for a May or June return, Fried is eager for the chance to finally work in tandem. Perhaps that’s part of flipping the script against Toronto.
“I personally think that our group is good enough talent-wise to compete with anyone in the game,” Fried said. “We didn’t have the series that we wanted to. A big part of that was we weren’t able to pitch as well as we wanted to keep us in games. We were behind early and often. Then you’re asking a big task in playoff games for your offense to put up five, six, seven runs.”
Off the mound, Fried is unassuming. Last season, he described a typical night at home as such: curled up on the couch, laptop open to hitter tendencies, while two dogs sprint across the floor and his girlfriend, Reni Meyer-Whalley, watches a reality show.
As he put it then: “I get once a week to do this, so I want to make the most of it. I’m a competitive guy. I treat every start the same, where it’s a must-win mentality. I’m expecting to go out there and have us win.”
No wonder that, by Fried’s calendar, a part of him is still stuck on October 5th. In his mind, the Blue Jays keep circling the base, Ernie Clement’s homer setting off the foghorn.
At this point, Fried believes those memories serve a purpose.
“It definitely didn’t leave a good taste in our mouths,” Fried said. “We’re motivated. We want to be able to clean up a lot of the mistakes that we made last year, try to learn from it and be able to get better. Hopefully we’ll get to where we want to go, which is the World Series.”