Atlanta Braves: Breaking down Max Fried’s brilliant performance
Max Fried was amazing for the Atlanta Braves on Thursday night as they won game one of a four-game series against the Washington Nationals.
The Atlanta Braves got this weekend off to a great start with a big 4-2 win on Thursday night over the Washington Nationals to extend their lead in the NL East to eight games.
As the Atlanta Braves look to wrap up the division, one of the biggest questions is who will start game three for them in the NLDS.
Max Fried made his case for that spot after dominating the Nationals on Thursday.
He won his 16th game of the season by tossing 7 shutout innings while only allowing 1 hit and no walks with 9 strikeouts.
It was by far his best outing of the season, and it was the first time he recorded an out in the 7th inning since May 1.
The Atlanta Braves have now won his last nine starts and 14 of his last 16 starts.
The lefty’s ERA is now down to 3.86 on the season.
Breakdown
There was a different Max Fried on the mound Thursday night and one that I think could make a huge difference in the postseason.
We’ve talked for a while now how Fried has struggled to go deep into games and has struggled the third time through the lineup.
He’s had several games were he dominates for four or five innings and then things start to fall apart.
On Thursday it seemed like he changed things up a bit to try and go deeper into the game, and it obviously worked.
Typically Fried’s best pitch is his curveball, but sometimes he falls in love with it too early and has nothing left for the later innings.
The first time through the lineup on Thursday he mainly featured his fastball and slider.
He threw five curveballs the first time through the lineup, and none to the first four hitters the first time through.
Comparing that to his last outing against the White Sox he threw eight curveballs the first time through the lineup and was mainly fastball-curveball.
Fried threw seven curveballs the second time through the order on Thursday with three of them earning him a strikeout, including that nasty curveball to strikeout Juan Soto.
He only faced the top four hitters for a third time and threw five curveballs to them.
It was pretty obvious that the gameplan for Brian McCann and Fried was to mainly feature that fastball and slider the first time through the lineup and to only use the curveball when necessary.
And that seemed to surprise their top hitters the second time through the lineup.
Another huge thing that aided Fried’s success on Thursday was strike one. He got a first-pitch strike to 17 of the 21 batters he faced. He had nine at-bats where he threw more than four pitches.
That allowed him to get quick outs and go deeper into the game.
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Hopefully, this is a gameplan that Fried sticks with the rest of the season, and if he can generate this same type of success with it, the Atlanta Braves chances in the playoffs skyrocket.