Having just lost Juan Soto to the crosstown rival Mets, the Yankees pivoted in a big way Tuesday, agreeing to an eight-year, $218 million contract with former Braves ace Max Fried.
It's the largest ever guaranteed contract for a left-handed pitcher, and on the surface anyway, it's a nice fit. Left-handed pitchers tend to fare well at Yankee Stadium, which isn't as friendly to right-handed batters. And it may not even matter in Fried's case since he's a reliable ground-ball pitcher, having delivered the second-best rate among qualifying pitchers last season. Those ground-ball skills are the main reason he's put together a 2.81 ERA over the past five years, with his 3.25 ERA in 2024 actually representing the high mark during that time.
But here's where I point out that this free agent deal, like every other free agent deal, is pending a physical, and while normally that's a matter of crossing t's and dotting i's, I can't shake the feeling that there might be a hiccup in Fried's case.
It's a ghoulish thing, predicting injury, and many shrink from it for precisely that reason. But would it be wise to ignore that Fried has missed time with a forearm strain each of the past two seasons, particularly given the connection between forearm injuries and (gulp) Tommy John surgery? I dare say no, it would not. What followed from Fried's latest IL stint were uncharacteristic control lapses. He issued 4.4 walks per nine innings across six August starts and also finished 2024 with the lowest swinging-strike rate (10.2 percent) of his career.
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These are vague warning signs, but the accumulation of them caused me to predict back in September that Fried would have trouble finding a free agent deal to his liking because of something that turns up on his physical. And now he'll have that physical.
And that's good news for Fantasy Baseball. Really, his free agency comes at the best possible time for restoring faith in his health. This physical will go a long way toward determining if I have him properly ranked as my 23rd starting pitcher. If there's something going on with the elbow/forearm area (or anywhere else, for that matter), the Yankees will surely renege. They won't proceed with a record-setting deal if there's any foreseeable risk. But if we hear nothing and the deal goes through as reported, then great. We can trust that Fried is healthy and draft him with confidence, perhaps as more like the No. 15 starting pitcher.
After all, he's about as reliable as pitchers get for ERA, and the Yankees should ensure he continues to win games at the rate he did with the Braves. He falls a little short of being an ace since he's only once reached 180 innings and averages just under a strikeout per inning, but he's the sort of pitcher that you'd never dream of sitting when he's healthy ... which hopefully he will be.
As a consequence of this deal, the Yankees now have seven pitchers for five spots, with Luis Gil, Marcus Stroman and Clarke Schmidt being the ones on the bubble. They could choose to trade from that excess (and many speculate that they will), but for now, the most obvious odd man out is Schmidt, which is a shame because the 28-year-old made major inroads last year with a 2.85 ERA, 1.18 WHIP and 9.8 K/9 across 16 starts. Granted, no team makes it through an entire season with just five starters, and you can trust that Schmidt will be at the ready should an opening arise.
Meanwhile, the Braves starting rotation looks pretty thin right now, particularly with the reports earlier this offseason that Spencer Strider (elbow bracing procedure) likely won't be ready for the start of 2025. My hope is that they're simply looking to front-load Strider's innings management, sort of like the Pirates did with Paul Skenes this past season, but in any case, there are two openings at the moment behind Chris Sale, Reynaldo Lopez and Spencer Schwellenbach. Grant Holmes, Ian Anderson and AJ Smith-Shawver are the most interesting in-house candidates, but there's also a chance the Braves bring back Charlie Morton.
