LOS ANGELES – The brilliance that the Yankees have come to know and expect from Max Fried eluded him on Friday, as he endured his worst start with his new team in a series-opening, World Series rematch with the Dodgers.
Fried, signed to an eight-year, $218 million deal over the winter, entered the 8-5 loss with a 1.29 ERA over his first 11 starts, but he allowed six earned runs over five complete innings. The childhood Dodgers fan, who went to high school in Los Angeles, also totaled eight hits, zero walks, three strikeouts and 75 pitches in his first loss of the year.
“They’re good players,” Fried said after a homer-happy Yankees offense gave him a 5-2 lead entering the sixth inning. “Obviously, a big core group of them won the World Series last year, and they know how to win games. I felt like the guys did a great job tonight putting up early runs, and for the most part, I just didn’t do my job.”
Shohei Ohtani made it immediately known that Fried lacked his best stuff. With the southpaw misplacing a sinker up in the zone on his first pitch of the game, the Japanese superstar smoked the ball over the center field wall for his 21st home run of the season.
The longball tied the game at one in the first inning after Aaron Judge also went deep. Friday marked the first time in MLB history that both reigning MVPs homered in the first inning of the same game, per OptaSTATS. Ohtani, however, wasn’t done with Fried.
The majors’ home run leader struck another bases-empty blast in the sixth, this time on a high heater over the middle. The towering bomb to right took so long to come down that Dodger Stadium began playing celebratory music before the ball landed.
“I wasn’t trying to go up,” Fried said of Ohtani’s homers. “He’s a good hitter. I made two mistakes in the same spot and he hit them out.”
Two home runs tonight for Shohei Ohtani and 22 on the year 🤯#FridayNightBaseball pic.twitter.com/aEn9Jp1v2k
— MLB (@MLB) May 31, 2025
Ohtani’s second jack kicked off a calamitous inning for Fried, who hung his head, bent over and held his hands on his knees as the shot soared. The pitcher proceeded to surrender singles to Teoscar Hernández and Will Smith.
Freddie Freeman – who took home the 2024 World Series MVP – then knocked Fried out with an RBI double.
“I don’t think he had his good breaking ball going tonight,” Aaron Boone said. “And then that inning, he just left some pitches in the heart of the plate.”
Freeman put the Dodgers down, 5-4, as Austin Wells, Trent Grisham and Paul Goldschmidt joined Judge in going deep over the first three innings. But with Jonathan Loáisiga in for Fried, Andy Pages tied the game with an RBI single.
From there, a fielder’s choice finally got the Yankees an out, as Goldschmidt initiated a rundown that prevented Freeman from scoring. Max Muncy was then intentionally walked to load the bases, but Tim Hill entered and issued a free pass to Michael Conforto, forcing in a run.
The Dodgers scored two more runs on a seventh-inning Pages single off Yerry De los Santos, but they did most of their damage off Fried.
“I’m a competitor,” said Fried, who blamed poor execution and location for his clunker. “I want to go out there and win. So the fact that we had a lead and I gave it up a couple times, it’s not going to sit well with me. But you just gotta be able to use it as motivation to go out next time and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
The Yankees’ new, unquestioned ace with Gerrit Cole out for the year, Fried had not permitted more than two earned runs in a single outing this season prior to Friday. He had also held opponents to a total of three runs on the road.
That the ex-Brave’s first letdown with his new team came in a highly-anticipated matchup made for a disappointing evening, though certainly not one the Yankees will worry about moving forward.
“He’s going to be fine,” Judge said. “I wouldn’t say that’s struggling. He’s been the best pitcher in the game all year, and he was going up against a great ballclub that’s going to put up some great at-bats against you all night long. So he went out there and battled. You’re gonna have games like this, but we got all the confidence in the world in Max and what he’s able to do. I’m looking forward to him being out there in another five days.”
Judge added that Fried regularly amazes with his “homework” habits. The two typically sit near each other on team flights, only for Fried to bury his head in his laptop, scouting reports and personal notes.
“He’s one of a kind,” Judge said.
While some pitchers might flush a stinker like the one Fried produced on Friday, he said he’ll study the outing just like any other. The idea is that doing so will prevent another poor performance.
“It’s information,” Fried said, “so I’ll try to do whatever I can to see what went wrong.”
