Yankees Ready to Arm Max Fried in His Relentless Pursuit of Improvement

Most of the time, when professional sports teams offer you north of $200 million, they try to get you to take it by telling you how great they think you are. The New York Yankees got lefty Max Fried in part because they did the opposite.

“I’m someone that is always looking for a way to get better,” he said on Wednesday in his introductory media session. “In our meeting, they expressed they felt like they had some ideas, and I’m all ears.”

Both sides now reference that Zoom meeting as the moment that made them comfortable committing to a long-term deal; they eventually settled on eight years and $218 million, the largest contract for a left-handed pitcher in history. (Fried, who turns 31 next month, said he was happy about the terms but not overly caught up in them: His first big purchase, he thought, might be fancy dog food for his three-year-old mutt, Apollo.) The Yankees liked that Fried wanted to get better. Fried liked that the Yankees wanted to help him do just that.

He said he walked through the clubhouse last week during his visit and noticed the three words painted on the wall: PREPARE, COMPETE and WIN. That sounded about right, he thought.

“Going into this process, one of the biggest things for him was he always feels like he pitched with five gears,” said Fried’s agent, Ryan Hamill of CAA. “He wanted to find somewhere where he could find that sixth gear.” He added, “He thinks his next eight years are going to be his best eight years.”

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The last eight have been pretty good: two All-Star selections, two top-five National League Cy Young Award finishes, three Gold Gloves, a 3.07 career ERA, 23.1 wins above replacement (17th among active pitchers) and a World Series title with the Atlanta Braves in 2021.

“There’s still a little bit in there for me to do better,” Fried said, referencing his consistency and the precision of his pitch shapes. Hamill added that Fried wants to nail down his release point on each of his seven offerings: a four-seamer, a curveball, a sinker, a changeup, a sweeper, a slider and a cutter.

The Yankees like Fried as a person and as a student of the game, they said. They also like the pitcher he is now and what he offers a rotation that can at times offer the same profile.

“A lot of our guys are strikeout-oriented, a little bit more flyball-prone,” said Yankees pitching coach Matt Blake. “He’s more of a contact manager. He fills up the zone, a lot of different spin options. Kind of has a wide arsenal, so kind of a little bit different look than we got.”

Blake declined to be specific about what he might change about Fried’s arsenal. “Little things that we can do to keep adapting,” Blake said. He added, “As accomplished as he is, he’s open-minded that there’s things that he maybe hasn’t been exposed to yet, from an information standpoint, from a tech standpoint, that we probably had some room to help him grow further.”

At times Fried’s constant tinkering made him a challenging pupil in Atlanta, Hamill said, but it should make him a good fit in a rotation whose ace, Gerrit Cole, is so eager to discuss pitching minutiae that the people around him have to shoo him away so they can work. So when the Yankees showed up on the Zoom with nine people—“more than double” any of the other teams, said Hamill—Fried was thrilled.

“The Yankees are one of the best, I guess, analytical or really great pitching labs,” he said. “They have a lot of success stories of making guys a lot better.”

Often those guys are marginal relievers who become elite bullpen weapons. Last year alone, they turned twice-waived, once-released righty Luke Weaver into their closer; thrice-waived righty Ian Hamilton into a crucial setup man; and lefty Tim Hill and righty Jake Cousins, both available for nothing from the Chicago White Sox—the worst team in history—into devastating firemen.

With Fried, of course, the ceiling is much higher. GM Brian Cashman said he informed Hamill early in the winter that Fried, whom the team had long coveted, would be his first priority as soon as learned whether star right fielder Juan Soto wanted to return. In the end, Soto chose 15 years and $765 million for the New York Mets, clearing the way for Cashman to pursue Fried in earnest.

On Wednesday, Fried beamed as he pulled on his new Yankees jersey and tugged a new Yankees cap over a newly clean-shaven face. He posed for photos and thanked his family. He took questions and participated in videos for social media. Then he left Yankee Stadium. He had to get back to work.