Atlanta Braves: Max Fried dominates without curveball, Pache’s debut
By Seth Carter
The Atlanta Braves crushed the Phillies on Friday night. We take a look at some key stories, including Max Fried’s dominance, Cristian Pache’s debut, and other notes.
The Atlanta Braves‘ ace Max Fried took the mound against Phillies’ ace Aaron Nola on Friday night. In the end, Nola’s shortest career outing won the night for Fried and the Braves as Atlanta sent Philly to their 4th straight loss, 11-2.
Fried gave up a couple of bloop hits in the first inning but was peppering fastballs and sliders through the first two innings. His vaunted curveball remained in his back pocket as his confidence in every pitch and everything he does continues to grow. Max has grown-man confidence in his fastball, his slider, his mustache, his glare, everything is working for the lefty right now.
In the top of the third, Max threw a backdoor-front door slider to strike out Kingery. That’s when the slider goes in the backdoor, travels through the house, and exits through the front door.
Fried is setting up his slider by being unafraid to pitch the fastball inside to right-handed hitters. Max’s fastball was bouncing around between 93-97 mph on the night. As the game progressed the ball began to travel faster.
It’s amazing to me when you see a guy like Fried, who was on point last night, miss one pitch over the middle to Realmuto and it instantly gets turned into a missile that bounces off the leftfield wall. Pitching in the Major Leagues is really hard.
The one run Fried allowed was the first time he allowed a run prior to the fourth inning this entire season.
Max Fried ended the night with five strikeouts in five innings pitched and allowed just one earned run. He lowered his season ERA to 1.32, still 2nd among qualified NL starters (now that Trevor Baurer is qualified).
While his curveball may be his best pitch, he only needed it 13 times on the night. He threw 54% fastballs and 24% sliders. The rest of the league should surely take notice that Fried is dominant even without the curve.