SAN FRANCISCO — Max Fried signed with the Yankees before last season with the idea of pitching at the top of the rotation, alongside Gerrit Cole.
But when Cole was lost for all of last season with Tommy John surgery, Fried took charge as the ace of the rotation.
With Cole approaching a return at some point in late May or early June, he and Fried should be able to provide that anticipated one-two punch soon enough.
In the meantime, Fried picked up where he left off in Wednesday’s season-opening 7-0 win over the Giants at Oracle Park, pitching 6 ¹/₃ scoreless innings.
It came after he began his outing with a four-pitch walk to the free-swinging Luis Arraez and then gave up a one-out single to Rafael Devers.
Fried got out of the inning unscathed, and after the Yankees gave him a five-run lead in the top of the second, the lefty cruised the rest of the way.
He retired 10 of 11 after Devers’ hit and pitched into the seventh despite being limited to around 90 pitches.
Fried left after 86 pitches and was dominant after the first despite insisting he didn’t have his best stuff — a sentiment Aaron Boone agreed with.
“It was one of those outings you’ve got to try to figure out how to get it done when you aren’t the most locked in out of the gate,” Fried said. “You grind through it.”
Boone said of Fried: “He can beat you in different ways … his arsenal is so vast that he makes you have to account for a lot of things.”
It includes a four-seam fastball, cutter, sinker and curveball, with some sweepers, changeups and sliders mixed in.
Boone noted that since Fried’s cutter wasn’t as effective as it usually is, his four-seamer was even more important.
It all added up to Fried easily outpitching San Francisco ace Logan Webb.
“That’s what an ace looks like when he’s grinding,’’ Boone said.
Certainly, something must have changed after that rough top of the first, when Fried found himself in trouble almost immediately with Willy Adames and Jung Hoo Lee coming to the plate.
“He was a little more in the zone early and got ahead [in counts],” Austin Wells said.
And Fried credited the early five-run advantage for giving him some breathing room for most of the outing.
“It gives you a little more room for error and you can be aggressive and make adjustments,” Fried said.
It also helps to have filthy stuff, as Ryan McMahon noted.
The third baseman scoffed at the notion that Fried was anything but excellent in his first start.
“He really knows how to pitch,” McMahon said. “He probably told you he didn’t have his best stuff, which is crazy with what he did. He knows how to compete, and we feed off that.”
