The New York Yankees lost their second-best player as a free agent on Sunday, but GM Brian Cashman didn’t sulk. He went out and got one of the two best free agents left on the market, left-hander Max Fried, agreeing to give the former Atlanta starter an eight-year, $218 million contract that helps give the Yankees one of the best rotations (on paper) in the American League.
Fried has quietly been among the best starting pitchers in the game over the last five years, ranking 11th in fWAR since the start of the 2020 season with 15.4 despite missing 15-20 starts in that time span due to injuries. He’s got a hammer curveball that remains his primary offspeed pitch and a real swing-and-miss weapon for him, with whiff rates consistently in the 35-40 percent range. He sits 93-94 mph and throws a wide assortment of pitches, with Statcast giving him seven distinct ones in 2024, separating a lower-velocity sweeper that had more break than his traditional slider. I wrote in his free-agent capsule that I liked him as a long-term option because he doesn’t rely on velocity to get hitters out, and suggested he’d get close to $30 million a year (correct) and maybe five years (incorrect).
The length of this deal may be a red herring of sorts, as teams are doing longer contracts to lower the AAV for luxury-tax purposes, something the Yankees of all teams will always have to consider. Is it more like seven years at $31 million per year? Six years and $36.3 million per? Either one seems reasonable, if a little long, for a pitcher whose way of getting outs depends on command and changing speeds and shapes, rather than pure power. Given that many pitchers lose velocity in their 30s, and that there’s at least some evidence now that pitching at your maximum velocity is connected to elbow problems, Fried seems like one of the best bets in free agency to hold his value.
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Why the Yankees targeted Max Fried and how he fits in their rotation
He is valuable, too, and slots in immediately as the Yankees’ No. 2 starter, a consistent 3-4 WAR starter who has made 28 starts four times in the last five full MLB seasons. The Yankees have a very strong rotation on paper if everyone is healthy, and could even try to trade one starter — maybe Nestor Cortes, who’s one year from free agency — for short-term offensive help somewhere.
Nothing they do can fully replace what they lost with the departure of Juan Soto, but Fried may have been the next-best option for them. He did have a reverse platoon split in 2024, driven largely by a .412 BABIP by left-handed batters, but given the small sample and his career splits to that point, I’m inclined to think that’s just a fluke. He has multiple weapons that should be effective against lefties, including that curveball and his true slider.
Fried would have been a great fit for a lot of teams, but I wonder what the Los Angeles Angels are going to do now that the guy who was probably the best fit for them — he’s good, he’s young, and he happens to be from LA — is already signed. The Angels have to add some high-end pitching to be relevant at all this year, and that would still require them to get a healthy Mike Trout season and probably sign or otherwise acquire at least one more bat.
The Angels should be heavy on Jack Flaherty, Corbin Burnes, and even Sean Manaea, but they’re unlikely to land even one of these guys. I don’t understand playing out the string of the Trout contract without investing in more talent around him. At that point, just trade him and start a proper rebuild, especially now that Shohei Ohtani is gone. The team’s pattern of drafting college hitters who should move quickly says that that is not their mindset, so go spend some of Arte’s money.
(Photo: Dale Zanine / USA Today)
