ATLANTA — Max Fried had an 18.00 ERA after his first two starts. Now the Braves left-hander has a 2.91 ERA and a legit shot at making his second All-Star team in three years.
He credits veteran Braves rotation mates Chris Sale and Charlie Morton for helping him get back on track and refocused after the brutal beginning of his season. It’s another example of how bright Fried is — smart enough to listen to guys who’ve been around a lot longer and who’ve overcome extensive trials and tribulations.
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“The amount of knowledge that they’re able to bring and their experience, you can’t get enough of it,” said Fried, who has allowed one or no earned runs in six of his past nine games entering his start in Friday’s opener of the highly anticipated home series against the NL East-leading Philadelphia Phillies.
Fried has a 1.92 ERA and puny .486 opponents’ OPS in his last 12 starts, and the Braves are glad he’s lined up to face the Phillies in a series that is more important than most in July. The Braves are in danger of falling double-digit games behind the Phillies again before the All-Star break. The Phillies are playing without injured stars Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber and J.T. Realmuto yet are still keeping Atlanta at more than arm’s distance in the standings.
After a recent 7-1 surge by the Braves reduced Philly’s lead from 10 games to six, it’s back to nine, following seven losses in the past 12 games for Atlanta. The Braves just dropped two of three at home against the San Francisco Giants, including a 4-2 loss Thursday night.
The Braves are a woeful 3-27 since May 1 in games in which they’ve allowed three or more runs and have lost 27 consecutive games when allowing four or more runs, their last such win on April 17 at Houston in a 5-4 game. That’s astonishing.
Snitker on Philly series: "I don't think this is a do or die weekend. We want to win this series. It's a division rival, those are always big. And so many teams in our division are right there, too. So it's a big series. It's kind of why you play this, to get series like this."
— David O'Brien (@DOBrienATL) July 5, 2024
Morton didn’t pitch poorly Thursday, giving up four runs (three earned) in 5 1/3 innings, but he left two cutters over the plate that were pulverized for home runs in the fourth inning, a two-run shot by Heliot Ramos and a bases-empty, 111 mph liner two batters later by Matt Chapman.
“A night like tonight, if I’m being objective, it’s not because I’m 40 years old that I gave up two home runs,” Morton said. “It’s because I threw two cutters in spots where they shouldn’t have been thrown. And there were better pitches to throw in that situation. Could I have located them better? Sure. Might I have gotten the ball back? Probably. But the reason why that happened is because I threw my worst pitch.”
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The Braves got two runs on three hits and a sacrifice fly in the first inning against Logan Webb, who limited them to four hits over the remainder of his seven innings. The Braves have lost eight of the past 12 Morton starts, though his respectable 3.84 ERA in that span indicates how disappointing Atlanta’s offense has been.
The lineup has been slowed by injuries and by multiple slumps for sluggers such as Matt Olson, last year’s MLB home run and RBI leader. Olson is batting .241 with a .741 OPS, 12 homers and 98 strikeouts four games past the halfway point of this season. He has one homer, three RBIs and 25 strikeouts in his past 16 games.
So now the Braves will turn to Fried, one of three potential All-Star starting pitchers — along with Sale and Reynaldo López — who’ve played a huge part in keeping the Braves afloat while their offense has failed to gain traction for any extended stretch. After enduring the worst back-to-back starts of his career to begin the season, Fried has a 2.08 ERA and .196 opponents’ average in 14 starts since.
“I learn something new from Charlie and Chris every day,” Fried said, “just being open and trying to soak up the information and asking them questions. Not being afraid, not being intimidated and just being like, ‘Hey, this is something that you’ve gone through in your career at some point,’ and just being able to hopefully take the information that they have and shorten that curve for myself instead of going through all of the bad.”
Fried paused for a moment. He’s 30, has seen a lot, been one of baseball’s most successful pitchers since his first season as a full-time starter in 2019. But the experience of Morton, 40, and Sale, 35, is next-level stuff, finishing school for pitchers, and both are eager to share all they’ve learned from a combined 31 major-league seasons.
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Fried feels fortunate to have his locker between them in the Braves clubhouse. It’s a vast resource, one he taps into plenty. Morton appreciated what Fried said but made it clear he didn’t think Fried needed much advice.
“Yeah, we’re friends,” Morton said. “So I think he trusts us. And I think he’s got enough of an idea of what he’s trying to do, and he’s steadfast in his own ways, that he can filter information from other guys. Yeah, I think it’s a nice thing to have, some older guys. But really, he’s figured out what he’s trying to do.”
Fried is tied for 10th-lowest ERA among MLB qualifiers entering Friday and ranks fifth among NL qualifiers. Sale (2.71) is second among NL qualifiers behind Ranger Suarez (2.27) of the Phillies, who also have the league’s third-lowest (Zack Wheeler, 2.74) and sixth-lowest (Cristopher Sánchez, 2.96).
Fried issued three walks and gave up three runs without making it out of the first inning in his first start, and allowed 10 hits and eight runs in 4 2/3 innings of his second start. Then, he flipped the switch.
“Just executing a little better,” said Fried, who talked plenty to Morton and Sale in those first weeks of the season. “I was just leaving some pitches over the middle of the plate, and I was walking a lot of guys. … I think it was just more about executing my pitches and mixing it up. I wasn’t keeping guys off balance enough.”
He kept it in perspective, which wasn’t easy.
“It’s not like I sat there and said, like, I have to reinvent myself or revert back or do anything that extensive,” Fried said. “It was just, OK, let’s objectively look at what happened and make some changes and adjustments and not worry about it. It’s understanding that it’s in the past and focusing on what you can control. Because if you’re pitching for what happened last start, two starts, three starts, whatever it may be, you’re not focusing on today’s game. Things can snowball real fast.”
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Suárez starts Saturday, but the Braves will miss Wheeler and Sánchez in this series. Fried will face Phillies veteran Aaron Nola (3.43), and Suárez faces Braves rookie Spencer Schwellenbach. In the series finale, López faces Phillies rookie Michael Mercado in his second start.
López’s 1.83 ERA is the best in the majors among pitchers with 60 or more innings, but he doesn’t have enough innings to qualify for ERA rankings; his 83 2/3 innings are four outs shy of the one-inning-per-team-game minimum.
If López had those four additional outs, the Braves and Phillies would have six of the current top seven qualified ERAs. And it’s possible each of those Braves starters could hear their names called Sunday when All-Star pitchers and reserves are announced for the NL and AL teams.
Sale made seven consecutive AL All-Star teams through 2018 but hasn’t been back because of assorted injuries that undermined him every season since — until now. He conceded it would be special to return to the All-Star Game in his first season with the Braves, but he likely will have two more starts before the All-Star break and wants to focus on those for now.
“I would appreciate it,” Sale said of possibly making the July 16 All-Star Game at Texas, “but again, we’ve got baseball to play and I don’t want to get distracted with all that kind of stuff.”
The Braves last had three starting pitchers named to the All-Star team in 1997, when Hall of Famers Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine were joined by Denny Neagle, who led the NL with 20 wins that season and finished third in Cy Young voting behind Pedro Martinez and Maddux.
Braves players also are lobbying hard for 40-year-old reliever Jesse Chavez to make his first All-Star team.
“That would be a lot of fun to see Chavey go to the All-Star Game,” Sale said. “What a great story. You look at his numbers, they’re there. … And then you get a little bit deeper — who he is in the clubhouse and who he is as a teammate — you’re not going to get a guy who’s going to get pulled for harder.
“Everybody in that clubhouse wants him to be there. It would be an awesome story. Just hope it goes that way.”
(Photo of Max Fried: Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)
