CHICAGO — These were not the Blue Claws or the Jumbo Shrimp that Max Fried was facing Friday, so maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised if the Atlanta Braves veteran turned things up a notch when he moved from rehab starts to facing a surging Chicago Cubs team at Wrigley Field in his first major-league start in three months.
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But he didn’t turn it up a notch. He turned it up several.
Fried was dominant in his return from the injured list, retiring the first 12 batters and allowing just three singles in six innings, with no walks and eight strikeouts, in an 8-0 rout that was fueled both by a seven-run fourth inning and his left arm.
“That was something else,” said manager Brian Snitker, whose Braves became baseball’s first 70-game winners (70-37) on a day they welcomed back the man who could be instrumental to their goal of a second World Series trip in three years. “I really didn’t know what to expect. But honestly, I didn’t think he’d be that sharp. That was very impressive.”
Fried threw 49 strikes in 72 pitches including five pitches at 96.1 mph or above, topping out at 97.1. He shut down a Cubs team that had won 13 of its previous 16 games and since June 9 had the most runs in the majors and the second-highest batting average.
“I felt sharper than expected,” said Fried, the 2022 National League Cy Young Award runner-up, who had been out since May 5 with a forearm strain. “I had a lot of nervous energy, just was looking forward to this day for a long time. These guys have been doing so good for so long, that I just kind of wanted to try to seamlessly fit in and not try to mess anything up.”
He did a whole lot more than not mess things up. He gave the Braves and their followers another big reason to believe in a team with a historically powerful lineup, a team that’s built a huge NL East lead despite going three months without Fried and Kyle Wright, last year’s MLB wins leader. Wright has been out with a shoulder injury and is expected back in September.
Fried is back now. Man, is he ever.
“I mean, that went great,” catcher Sean Murphy said of Fried’s performance in Friday’s rout, which Murphy helped assure with a two-run homer in the fourth inning, followed one pitch later by a Marcell Ozuna homer that sailed over the left-field bleachers and out of Wrigley Field. “(Fried) kept his pitch count down, attacked the zone, got some weak contact, punchouts, mixed all his pitches — I think we got exactly what we wanted out of him.”
The Braves have back-to-back home runs in three consecutive games and 14 times this season, while no other team has done it more than nine times.
Their six extra-base hits tied for the most in the majors in one inning over the past 50 seasons, per Sarah Langs of MLB Advanced Media. All those hits and runs in the seventh came against Cubs starter Kyle Hendricks, and Austin Riley added a solo homer in the seventh off Hayden Wesneski to raise the Braves’ total to 209 in 107 games, matching Minnesota’s total through 107 games in 2019, when the Twins set the single-season MLB record with 307.
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“I think we’re accustomed to that happening in the first inning,” Fried said, referring to the Braves’ record-setting pace for first-inning homers and runs. “But I’ll take it anytime I can get it.”
Hendricks has struggled mightily in his career against the Braves but retired the first nine batters he faced Friday, going pitch-for-pitch with Fried while both were perfect through three. But Fried kept going strong for another three innings, while the Braves pulverized Hendricks in the fourth, getting eight hits including two from Ronald Acuña Jr., who had a leadoff single and run-scoring triple.
“We’ve done that before,” Snitker said of the outburst. “We’ve had the big innings. I think they saw the starter once and then made some adjustments. Just had one of them innings.”
Murphy said of Hendricks, “He was making pitches, too. He was keeping the ball in the corners. We just adjusted our approach, made sure we didn’t chase what we didn’t want. Didn’t swing at the pitches he wanted us to swing at, and get the ones that we could handle. That’s it.”
Asked if there was something about the Braves that’s allowed them to pile up such audacious offensive totals and big innings, beyond having a lot of sluggers, Murphy thought for a moment and provided some insight.
“Just the level of trust, one through nine,” he said of a lineup that has no glaring weaknesses. “If it’s not your day, the next guy is gonna be there. And then the next guy, and the next guy and the next guy. It’s one through nine, at any point anyone can get you, and that’s what allows us to go up there and be relaxed and go up there and do our jobs.”
Fried has had a front-row seat for a lot of five-run (or more) Braves innings, watching many while leaning on the dugout railing at home games.
“I’ve had a blast watching them, but I’ve really missed being a part of it,” he said. “So, just trying to do what I can to just contribute. I know that if I can just give up a few runs and be aggressive and keep the team in it, they can explode at any time like they did today.”
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The seven-run inning propelled the Braves to this win, but Cubs manager David Ross said Fried was the difference in the game.
“Fried was pitching like an ace,” said Ross, a former catcher who spent four seasons with the Braves through 2012. “He had real stuff in the zone, mixing multiple pitches, the kitchen sink thrown at everybody. We never got him in trouble at all other than a couple singles. It’s 94-plus from the left side and it’s got some real run to it. He’s got some cut, the changeup was effective, he was able to land the breaking ball and back-foot slider.
“He was good. It’s a multi-pitch mix in the zone with stuff. He’s good.”
Fried threw a first-inning 97.1 mph fastball for a called third strike in the first inning to the second batter he faced, former Atlanta Gold Glove shortstop Dansby Swanson, who was playing against the Braves for the first time after playing for them the past seven seasons.
Max Fried strikes out Dansby Swanson with a 97-mph fastball ⛽️
Welcome back. pic.twitter.com/9Stw0Z9Zor
— Bally Sports: Braves (@BravesOnBally) August 4, 2023
“Weird, different,” Fried said of facing his friend and longtime former teammate. “But we’re both extreme competitors, and we want to go out there and give our best. I know that he’s definitely always kind of brought that out in me. It was fun to be able to compete against him.”
Snitker said of those first-inning radar-gun readings, “Early on there, when he was going back-to-back 97s, I’m thinking, ‘OK, that looks really good.’ Everything was just so, so good with Max. We’ll see how he feels tomorrow, how he wakes up and feels. But that was really, really encouraging.”
Swanson went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts against Fried, who induced an inning-ending groundout from Swanson in the sixth, after a pair of two-out ground-ball singles had put Cubs on first and second base — their only at-bat with a runner in scoring position all day.
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“I’ve worked really hard at fine-tuning things and just being better with my mechanics and timing and rhythm and all that,” Fried said. “When you have a lot of time in-season to work on those things, you try to take all that work and put it out there.”
Snitker has been around major-league and minor-league baseball for 47 years, so he didn’t pay much attention to stats from Fried’s recent rehab starts in Triple A. Those included six hits, three runs and two homers allowed in 3 1/3 innings against the Norfolk Tides on July 21, and five hits, two runs and two walks in 4 1/3 innings Saturday against the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp.
This is a pitcher who worked six scoreless innings for the Braves in the World Series-clinching Game 6 win at Houston in 2021 — after getting his foot stepped on covering first base in the first inning, which caused his ankle to twist grotesquely but somehow didn’t even slow him that night in Houston.
“I don’t put too much (meaning in rehab results),” Snitker said. “When they do those rehabs and come out healthy, that’s all I’m looking for. Because I’ve managed in Triple A when those guys come down, and I guarantee you, the adrenaline, the emotion, the energy in here (at Wrigley) was a lot better than the places where he pitched (on rehab). And they know what they’re doing, they’ve been through it.”
Fried knew what he was doing Friday, and also thought of the weeks and months ahead when Snitker removed him after six efficient innings and 72 pitches. Snitker said it wasn’t the innings but the “ups,” the number of times he got up to go back out for another inning. Fried had pitched into the fifth inning of only one of his four rehab starts.
In his first start back in the big leagues, all agreed six was enough. Playing the long game.
“In just talking to Max, we thought that was as far as he needed to go for the first time,” Snitker said. “Now I think he’ll feel good about letting the game take him where he wants to go (next start), now that he’s been out there.”
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Fried said, “I think at this point, we have a little bit more of a long-term approach on things. I really had only gotten one hitter into the fifth in rehab starts, so to be able to go out for the sixth was a big step. We’ve got two more months of baseball and playoffs as well. Knowing that, obviously I would love to be out there and keep going, but we’ve got bigger picture (concerns).”
To get where they aim to go, the Braves know they need a healthy Fried in October, paired with Spencer Strider and whoever they have as a No. 3 starter for the postseason. And Friday, that saw a whole lot of reasons to believe Max is back.
(Top photo of Max Fried: David Banks / USA Today)
