Max Fried completes rehab start in AAA Gwinnett; likely to make one more before being activated
Max Fried's Thursday rehab start in AAA Gwinnett was rained out last night, so he took the mound today for the first game of the doubleheader against the Norfolk Tides, AAA of the Baltimore Orioles.
The hope was that an extended, smooth outing today would allow Atlanta to possibly activate Max on normal rest for the 2nd game of the two-game series in Boston next week. After watching his outing, I'm not so sure that Fried's ready to come back just yet.
Max pitched 3.1 innings before hitting his pitch count limit, giving up six hits and three runs. He struck out five while not walking anyone, but also gave up two homeruns.
The outing against the most stacked minor league team in all of baseball - Norfolk has multiple Top 100 prospects in a stacked Baltimore system - started off normal enough, with Fried giving up one run on three straight singles that were all off the bat at less than 90 mph (and might be outs if hit into Atlanta's major league defense).
Fried followed that with a single but two strikeouts in a scoreless 2nd inning, and then opened the 3rd inning with two more strikeouts, of top prospects Connor Norby and Heston Kjerstad. But Joey Ortiz took a hanging curveball for a homer, and Daz Cameron opened the 4th inning with another homer to chase Fried from the outing right at his 60-pitch limit.
In the outing, Fried threw 65 pitches, 46 of them for strikes. He broke out the entire arsenal, throwing mostly 4-seam fastballs but also some sinkers, as well as his curveball, slider, changeup, and a newer sweeper. On the outing, he was right about 29% CSW (Called Strikes + Whiffs, a measure of how effective a pitcher's arsenal is at getting outs).
It felt like Fried was having some trouble locating his curveball, with more of them missing high in the zone than he usually shows. He also didn't get any whiffs on the fastball despite throwing 21 of them - 14 were swung at, with nine being foled off and five being put into play. It wasn't all bad, however - as we mentioned, Fried didn't walk any batters in the outing and he had a string of four straight strikeouts across the 2nd and 3rd innings.
It's entirely possible that Atlanta chooses to activate Fried for next week's short series at Boston, but it feels more likely that they'll give the lefty one more rehab start to make sure he's comfortable and can slot back into his spot atop the Atlanta rotation.
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