NEW YORK - Max Fried’s night could have tilted the other way in a hurry. Instead, he walked off Yankee Stadium with a lead still in place, and the Yankees soon turned a tight game into a 9-2 rout that completed a sweep of Boston in the Wild Card Series.
That’s the part that makes Fried’s outing matter. Before New York’s six-run sixth inning blew the game open, he had spent six innings keeping the Red Sox from taking over. Luis García Jr.’ s fourth-inning homer opened the scoring, Cody Bellinger added an RBI single in the fifth, and when Willson Contreras homered in the sixth, Boston was still close enough to make things uncomfortable.
Fried didn’t let that happen. He finished the inning with the Yankees still ahead, and his 98th pitch ended a line that included three hits, one walk and six strikeouts. Once he was done, New York’s offense gave him plenty of breathing room, with Bellinger’s three-run homer finishing the decisive rally.
The win sends the Yankees into the AL Division Series against Tampa Bay starting Saturday, and it also means they won’t need Gerrit Cole for an elimination game. That was the larger prize hanging over the night, even if Fried’s job was simply to keep the game from slipping away.
It wasn’t his cleanest work, and Fried admitted as much after the game. Asked about getting through an uneven start, he was blunt: “Yeah, I mean, it definitely wasn’t sharp from the get-go, but I just wanted to challenge them,” Fried said.
That approach fit the moment. The Yankees invested eight years and $218 million in Fried for exactly these October nights, and after a second regular season interrupted by two injured-list stints for a left elbow bone bruise, he still finished 5-5 with a 2.80 ERA. On Wednesday, he gave them the kind of start they needed most: one that held together long enough for the lineup to take over.
Boston briefly made things interesting after Contreras’ homer cut into the margin, but Fried kept the sixth from turning into a collapse. The bullpen didn’t need to clean up a mess. The offense arrived after the heavy lifting was done.
The pitch mix told part of the story, too. Fried leaned on 23 four-seam fastballs, 23 cutters and 23 sweepers, with 13 curveballs, 10 changeups and six sinkers mixed in. Those three primary pitches made up 69 of his 98 offerings, or 70.4%, giving Boston a steady rotation of looks instead of one predictable pattern.
The result was an outing that didn’t depend only on swing-and-miss stuff. Fried produced six strikeouts, but the chart also showed an overall whiff rate of 18.8% and an expected weighted on-base average of .176. In other words, he didn’t just miss bats - he kept damage to a minimum.
For Fried, there was also the matter of finishing the job after a postseason past that didn’t go the way he wanted. His previous October ended with seven runs allowed over three innings in Toronto on Oct. 5, when the Yankees never got to the fifth game he was scheduled to start. This time, he handed over a lead and watched it become a comfortable win.
He also followed Cam Schlittler, who threw 6 1/3 scoreless innings in Tuesday’s opener. Together, the two starters allowed one run over 12 1/3 innings, and New York outscored Boston 18-2 in the series despite Aaron Judge missing the games with a calf strain.
Judge watched the Yankees’ pitching carry the load and was quick to praise the group after the clincher. “Every single outing, these guys attack the strike zone and get out of jams. I’ve run out of adjectives and words to describe our pitching staff,” Judge said.
The performance gave Fried his first postseason win since Atlanta’s 2021 World Series clincher. Against Boston in Wild Card starts, he has now allowed one run in 12 1/3 innings. And according to research shared by MLB statistician Sarah Langs, he is one of seven pitchers to start in at least seven straight postseasons, a run that spans 2020 through 2026.
Tom Glavine leads that group with 11, followed by Greg Maddux with 10 and Andy Pettitte with nine. Clayton Kershaw and John Smoltz reached eight, while Roger Clemens got to seven. The total excludes 1994, when there was no postseason.
Now the Yankees move on with their rotation intact and Cole still available for the ALDS opener. Tampa Bay awaits after winning the season series 7-6, but New York heads in with the confidence of having won both ends of its opening formula: Schlittler set the tone, and Fried finished the sweep.
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