The list of what’s wrong with the Yankees is as long as the “gut punch” losses as cataloged by Aaron Boone, the manager who gets tossed from games at a rate we haven’t seen since Earl Weaver. The Yankees are below average in team speed (18th), baserunning (19th), defense as measured by outs above average (21st), bullpen ERA (22nd) and hitting in close and late situations (27th).
It’s more than just a small slump. The Yankees are 49–49 in their past 98 games. They are 31–36 against teams .500 and better, which makes them worse than the Angels against top competition.
Now they have something new to worry about: their most reliable pitcher is no longer reliable. Max Fried has been bad for close to two months.
The past seven-start stretch includes one start abbreviated and another skipped because of a blister.
Fried’s most recent outing, a 7–1 loss to Houston on Sunday, typified his recent problems. He continues to move away from his fastballs (four-seam and sinker) while relying on a cutter with poor command. He threw only 18% fastballs Sunday, the fourth-lowest percentage of his career (all this year), while giving up five hits on two-strike counts for only the fourth time in his career and one short of his career high.
Here is what has happened to Fried:
1. He is making mistakes with his cutter, his new favorite pitch.
It has lost some cut lately, and he is less accurate with it.
Fried likes to dot that cutter on the inside hairline of the strike zone to right-handed hitters. But as you can see here by his dispersal pattern, his misses are more pronounced.
2. The league has adjusted to the new version of Fried.
Upon signing with the Yankees, Fried told pitching coach Matt Blake he was open to working with the team’s analysts and technology on pitch shaping and sequencing. Fried overhauled how he pitched. He changed from a predominantly north/south pitcher (four-seam fastball and curveball) to an east/west pitcher (cutter/sweeper/sinker).
That is a massive change, especially for a successful pitcher. Fried surprised hitters with his new pattern. Old scouting reports became worthless. For instance, nothing reveals a pitcher’s true methodology like a full count. Last year a hitter could expect to see a fastball 64.4% of the time when Fried had a full count. Now Fried is most likely to throw a cutter on a full count (47.8%) while throwing a fastball only 30.1% of the time, less than half as often as he did last year.
3. By throwing fewer fastballs, Fried has lost command of his sinker and four-seamer.
Here is how far Fried has moved away from fastballs since last year:
Dive deeper and you find he has moved even further away from his fastballs during this slump.
His problems have nothing to do with velocity, spin or release point—all of which are virtually unchanged. But by cutting and sweeping the ball so much more this season, Fried has lost the ability to command his four-seamer and his sinker, when the hand must be fully behind the ball. The change to working more east/west even has affected his arm angle. By getting his hand around the baseball more to cut and sweep it, he has lowered his arm angle, which affects how well he can place his fastball.
Here is a look at Fried throwing his sinker in 2023 and 2025. I added the orange lines to highlight how his hand at release point this year is at a similar height but it is farther from his body and less “over the top.”
The Yankees have too many problems to survive a second-half swoon by Fried. In the past 30 days only the Rays, Giants and Cardinals took a bigger hit on their postseason odds than the Yankees, who now have a one-in-three chance of missing the playoffs, according to Baseball Reference.
Boone, who rarely denounces his team’s mistakes, continues his harsh treatment of umpires. He was ejected again Sunday for arguing balls and strikes, the 44th of his career in 1,150 games, which pushed him past Joe Girardi (43 in 2,055 games) and into a tie with Bobby Valentine (2,351 games). In an age of replay challenges, Boone somehow gets tossed at a rate (once every 26.1 games) equivalent to that of Weaver (26.5) and much more frequently than notorious umpire foils such as Jim Leyland (47.9), Billy Martin (47.2) and Leo Durocher (37.4).
This team relies heavily on Fried and Aaron Judge. Now both are struggling. Judge, fresh off his IL stint with a flexor tendon strain, has three singles and no extra-base hits in his past six games. Since he was pushing .400 through his first 66 games (.394), Judge has hit .238 in his past 42 games with a pronounced increase in his strikeout rate (22.8% to 31.1%).
Judge figures to heat up as he returns to a healthier version of himself, whatever or whenever that may be. Fried’s turnaround is less obvious. Perhaps the blister problem is lingering, or affects a certain pitch, such as the cutter. (He is throwing the cutter more since the blister problem surfaced, though.) Perhaps he needs to throw the sinker and four-seamer more so that they are there when he needs them. Perhaps it’s a matter of adjusting back against a league that has adjusted against him.
In his favor, Fried has been a better second-half pitcher (2.89 ERA) than first half (3.25) throughout his career. He has been nails particularly down the stretch, posting a September record of 15–7 with a 2.44 ERA, his best month. In the live ball era, only two other pitchers have a September ERA that low with that kind of winning percentage (.682, minimum 30 September starts): Stephen Strasburg (18–4, 1.95) and Clayton Kershaw (43–14, 2.32).
After New York was 13–4 in Fried’s first 17 starts, it is 2–5 in his seven starts since. He has eight starts left. Whatever is causing his problem commanding the ball, the Yankees need Fried to quickly find a way to improve it. With their many other issues, the Yankees’ playoff hopes may depend on it.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Max Fried’s Slump Comes Down to Three Main Issues.