DALLAS — After his big-league debut in 2019, Max Fried enjoyed an extended run better than any other Atlanta Braves pitcher since John Smoltz, the last of the team’s “Big Three” Hall of Fame pitchers to leave the franchise nearly two decades ago.
Now it’s Fried’s turn to leave the franchise that turned him into a star. On Tuesday, Fried agreed to sign an eight-year, $218 million deal with the New York Yankees, a league source confirmed to The Athletic. The deal, first reported by ESPN, is the most lucrative ever for a left-handed pitcher and the fourth-largest pitching contract overall. The move comes after the Yankees’ failed pursuit of Juan Soto. Prior to agreeing with the Yankees, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported that the Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays both had interest in the southpaw.
Source confirms: Max Fried to Yankees, eight years, $218M, pending physical. Biggest deal for a left-hander and fourth largest pitching contract in game’s history. First: @JeffPassan
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 10, 2024
Fried, who’ll turn 31 in January, entered the offseason as The Athletic’s No. 4 ranked free agent, and was projected by The Athletic’s Tim Britton to sign a five-year deal worth $140 million. Since his first full season in the majors, he’s posted a 71-31 record with a 3.06 ERA.
Over the past six seasons, Gerrit Cole (79-33) is the only pitcher with more wins than Fried, who went 11-10 with a 3.25 ERA in 29 starts in 2024, despite being briefly sidelined by a forearm issue, the second year of the same injury.
Fried went to arbitration with the Braves in 2022 and again in 2023 — he won the first case, lost the second — before settling with the team on a $15 million deal last winter to avoid a third hearing.
It’s unclear if the Braves and Fried were ever close to a long-term extension. The Braves made him a qualifying offer ($21.05 million) in November to assure they would get draft pick compensation if he signed elsewhere.
Among pitchers with 800 or more innings in the past six seasons, only Cole (2.98) had a lower ERA than Fried (3.06). Still, the fact that Fried didn’t have enough innings to qualify for some rankings over that period points to lingering concerns about the health of the left-hander, particularly as he enters his mid-30s.
Throughout his career, Fried has dealt with finger blisters and other injuries before the forearm issues impacted his past two seasons. He returned sooner than expected from the latest setback, missing just the first 13 games after being diagnosed with forearm neuritis following a one-inning appearance in the All-Star Game.
Before heading to the IL with neuritis, the slender lefty was 7-5 with a 3.08 ERA and two complete games in 18 starts. Over his final 11 regular season starts in 2024, he went 5-6 with a 3.53 ERA. His season ended unceremoniously, when in Game 2 of the NL Wild Card series against the San Diego Padres, he allowed five runs on eight hits over two innings, having exited the start with soreness after taking a line drive off his glute.
That final start for the Braves came against the very team that traded Fried to Atlanta in 2014, a six-player deal that also sent Justin Upton to the Braves.
Fried, a first-round pick in 2012 out of Harvard-Westlake High School in Los Angeles — where he was high school teammates with Jack Flaherty and Lucas Giolito — was a top prospect in the middle of Tommy John surgery rehab when the Padres traded him.
After joining the Braves rotation in 2019, he quickly developed into one of baseball’s elite pitchers. While Tim Hudson had an impressive nine-year stretch with the Braves through 2013, Fried is the most accomplished Atlanta starter since the trio of Smoltz, Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux.
Fried finished his Braves tenure as a two-time NL All-Star, a three-time Gold Glove Award winner and the 2021 Silver Slugger winner — the final year a pitcher was awarded the year-end hardware before the universal DH. He finished fifth in Cy Young Award balloting in 2020 and was runner-up to unanimous winner Sandy Alcantara in 2022, when Fried had a 2.48 ERA in 30 starts with career highs in innings (185 1/3) and strikeouts (170)
The 2024 season marked the third consecutive postseason disappointment for the Braves and Fried, who was impacted by the flu in 2022 and wasn’t sharp in 2023. In both those years, the Braves lost to the Philadelphia Phillies after having won their fifth and sixth consecutive NL East titles, a streak that ended in 2024 when Atlanta finished six games behind Philadelphia in the division.
But before those three quick October exits, there was glory in 2021. And like two other fan-favorite big pieces of that World Series team, Freddie Freeman and Dansby Swanson, did before him, Fried exits as a free agent.
(Photo: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)