3 Takeaways from Friday night’s Atlanta Braves big comeback vs the Phillies

2. Max Fried’s Night

It’s hard to figure out Max Fried right now.  After a brilliant start to the season, here’s the record of his last several starts:

• 4 runs (LAD)
• 3 (ARZ)
• 0 (MIL)
• 2 (SFG)
• 4 (WSH)
• 5 (PIT)
• 3 (MIA)
• 5 (PHI)

His ERA is now up to 4.11.  8 appearances into the season (6 starts), it was at 2.11.  This trend may have – even more than the plight of Kevin Gausman – been a significant part of the impetus that drove Alex Anthopoulos to making a deal for Dallas Keuchel.

The overall feel is that Fried is walking more and getting hit more.  Batters are figuring him out and he needs to adjust in kind.  But so far – a month into this downturn – there are no real signs of changes.

Now the Phillies may be a bad team to use – period – when choosing a time to worry about Fried.  That gets to the other part of this Takeaway:  the value of the extra big bat in the lineup.

We saw that in the 9th inning as the Braves still had Riley, McCann, and even Albies (next up) have been swinging hot bats.  There was no place for Neris to hide with the over-use of his splitter.

The Phils have a very potent offense as well, and it’s certainly plausible that any Braves’ starter might have been rocked around last night.

But for Fried, it’s about the total trend and something needs to change, whether that’s his pitch mix of pitch differentiations.

Brooksbaseball shows why Fried had early success:  the speed differential between his fastballs (94 mph), his slider (84), his changeup (83( and curve (75).

In the last month, his slider velo has actually increased from 82 to nearly 85 mph while the changeup has gone the other direction.  Other pitches: constant.

There’s not enough from this to draw a conclusion, but the real question is ‘how Max gets back to where he was?’

1. The Weekend

At this point, the Atlanta Braves are now playing with ‘house money’.

They stole a victory.  They have gotten into the heads of the Phillies (living there ‘rent free’).  They have insured that Philadelphia can’t leave Atlanta in 1st place.

So even as fangraphs touts that their ‘ace’ Aaron Nola is “Back”, it won’t matter… at least not unless he goes out and throws a complete game, and that seems unlikely.

Because of last night, the Phillies might choose to push Nola a bit further (he hasn’t gone past the 7th inning this year), but he’s also been issuing his share of walks:  4 per 9 innings.

Look for the Braves to lengthen this game by playing ‘pitch spoiler’ with him all day.

As we know, Atlanta doesn’t necessarily need to score early… they just need to ruin a bullpen late.