Fans of the Atlanta Braves are seeing a real breakout from Max Fried.
The Atlanta Braves have been seeing mixed numbers in fantasy baseball circles so far with some of their players as seemingly only one or two hitters are allowed to get hot at a time.
Happily, there’s one Braves pitcher who’s been staying hot, and that’s Max Fried… even though the fantasy numbers don’t love him as much as they should.
As one key example of the Atlanta hitting issues, even last night’s hero Dansby Swanson has been up-and-down thus far:
- Season start: 10-game hitting streak (14 hits in that stretch)
- Next 9 games: 6 hitless; 4 total hits
- Last 5 games: a new hitting streak, with 10 hits
That’s still pretty good — he’s ranking in the top 10 of all qualified shortstops in several useful categories. We’ll take that, for sure.
To the great relief of all, Max Fried hasn’t been had that problem of consistency: he’s simply getting hitters out, and if the voting were held today, he should easily take the NL Cy Young trophy.
Fried leads the NL’s qualified starters in ERA (1.24), second only to Lance Lynn (1.11) in the majors… and he seems to be getting better with each successive start. In fact, he’s now on a 12 inning scoreless string.
Next closest in starter ERA is the Padres’ Dinelson Lamet (as everyone guessed… his ERA is 1.59), with the ageless Adam Wainwright lurking in 3rd.
Fried is doing his thing thanks in part to a superior ground ball rate (roughly 60%) combined with an excellent defense behind him.
In truth, while Fried has been the most effective NL pitcher overall in his five starts, some of the most-watched individual number ranks don’t leap off the page:
- Strikeout rate: 23rd in MLB
- Walk rate: 36th
- LOB%: 13th
- BABIP: 20th (but we’ll get back to this one in a sec)
That said, there are a couple of other stats that tell you everything you need to know about how Fried is getting things done:
- Homer-to-Fly-Ball ratio: 0% (1st; with the most innings pitched among 3 others at 0%)
- Ground ball rate: 6th overall.
- Exit Velocity: 1st overall (83.6 mph)
This is the very definition of “pitching to weak contact“. Fried has hitters off-balance and failing to square up pitches. This is why his BABIP of .239 and Batting average against of .172 ring true.
In our fantasy league, which values innings, earned runs, strikeouts and wins, Fried isn’t the top guy. That’s Shane Bieber with his 4 wins, 34.2 innings thrown and a ridiculous tally of 54 strikeouts.
In short, Bieber is “dominant” in the traditional way; Fried is being dominant in a more subtle manner.
As a result, Bieber has 50% more points than Fried in our league (Fried being 6th among starting pitchers). That’s the stark contrast between the guys who blow hitters away with the ‘counting stats’ and the pitchers who can finesse their way to victory.
Honestly? I’d love to have one of each on the Atlanta Braves – just imagine how screwed up an opposing team would be after facing both on back-to-back nights.
Right now though… we’ll happily “settle” for who we’ve got — and Max Fried is putting on one heckuva nice show in the process.