TAMPA — Ruth. Gehrig. DiMaggio. Mantle. Costanza. Fried?
That’s right, Max Fried is a New York Yankee. After eight memorable seasons with the Braves, Fried signed a seven-year, $218 million deal with New York over the winter that makes him a foundational player on what’s perhaps America’s most iconic professional sports franchise.
The Braves will see Fried again. Interleague play is commonplace in modern MLB, so the Braves and Yankees will face each other every season. This year, that’ll occur July 18-20 at Truist Park. It’s the first series after the All-Star break.
So if Fried doesn’t appear on the Truist Park mound days earlier as an American League All-Star, there’s a chance he’ll do so immediately after the break. He acknowledges that whenever that day comes, it’ll be a strange sensation.
“It’s a weird one, that’s for sure,” Fried told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I don’t know how it’s going to play out with the rotation and stuff, but it is weird knowing I’m going to be going to the ballpark and entering the visiting clubhouse. Still have some time before it can really settle in, but it’s definitely a little different. We open up right after the All-Star break (in Atlanta). It’ll be fun. It’ll be nice to see a lot of those guys and say hi. But it’s definitely going to be strange, a little disorienting.”
Fried’s Yankees will enter the season as AL favorites. They won the pennant last October but lost in the World Series to Freddie Freeman’s Dodgers. It was the Yankees’ first World Series appearance since 2009.
The Yankees will try to break through just as Fried’s Braves did in 2021. After several disappointing postseason exits, the Braves — famously patched together with trade-deadline acquisitions and unheralded performers — surged through the postseason for their first championship since 1995.
Fried was marvelous in the Game 6 clincher, shutting out the Astros for six innings. It was his career-defining performance to this point, but when he looks back on that run, he views it in its totality.
“Game 6 was the winning one, but it was just that whole year and what that group was able to do,” he said. “We were just struggling, going back and forth, then we had that hot stretch at the end of the year and we came together as a tight-knit group. It wasn’t just one person. Everyone had their part and their moment to allow us to ultimately achieve our goal. I think just that whole process with the team was my favorite part, not just one moment.”
The Braves open their season March 27 in San Diego, where Fried made his final start for the franchise in October. Fried would seem likely to make his Yankees debut sometime during their opening series March 27-30 against the Brewers in New York.
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