The Road to Stardom
Throughout his career Fried has been compared to the likes of many pitchers, even our very own Cole Hamels, but his pitches and their movement are what make him unique.
Max Fried’s curveball has been one of his most talked-about pitches. The movement on this pitch is a big part of his rise to the big leagues. I mean just take a look at this video from @PitchingNinja on Twitter of ten of his nastiest curveballs.
10 Max Fried Curveballs from last night in 15 seconds. #NSFW pic.twitter.com/luKIYgQIeH
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 22, 2019
A Major League starter must have a good mix of pitches in order to work counts and batters. Fried works with a four seam fastball, a curveball, a changeup, and a slider he added in 2019.
In a piece entitled, “Max Fried Has Raised His Ceiling”, Tony Wolfe of FanGraphs notes that Fried never threw a slider in the first two years he pitched in the majors, but used it 15% of the time in 2019. This became his most effective pitch, causing an opponent wOBA of .228.
The addition of the slider is what made Fried stick as a starting pitcher. His fastball on the other hand, is the pitch that can still use some improvement.
This pitch did improve slightly in velocity in the last season, but it is still a bit of a liability keeping him from being the most effective. Of the 21 home runs he gave up, 12 of them were on fastballs.
Hopefully, Fried is working on this pitch the most in the offseason, and any sort of improvement would be a step in the right direction.
As he continues to fine-tune these pitches – especially the fastball – he will only become more dominant with his pitch arsenal.