When the Atlanta Braves let Max Fried leave in free agency last offseason, there was a contingent of fans that condemned the move while feeling deja vu as yet another star left the Braves for “greener” pastures. Fried was such an integral part of the Braves’ success in recent years and losing him to the Yankees of all teams understandably hurt.
The prevailing wisdom, though, was that his eight year, $218 million contract was just too high and long of a guarantee for Fried from the Braves. No one denied that he had been great and deserved to get paid, but Fried is already 31 years old and the vast majority of these long-term deals to pitchers that go deep into their late 30’s almost never end well. Atlanta already tends to avoid such deals in general, but such a deal for an aging pitcher was never going to happen.
Through his first four starts with the Yankees, it certainly does appear as though Atlanta made a mistake in letting Fried go on the surface. However, the decision-calculus shouldn’t change because of one season of work and the Braves still made the right choice.
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 16, 2025
Max Fried’s hot start with Yankees definitely sucks for Braves fans, but the team was still right
No one with a brain in their head thought that Fried was going to be bad in 2025 unless you were particularly convinced that he would get hurt again. Fried had been one of the better pitchers in baseball for at least five years and it was always likely that he would be so again. So far, that has been the case as Fried has a 1.88 ERA through his first 24 innings with New York including a nice little bump to his strikeout rate. Yep, he is still quite good.
However, Fried’s performance this year wasn’t in question when the Braves decided not to pursue him. If they could have gotten Fried for a shorter term deal in the five year range, Atlanta likely would have jumped at the opportunity. The problem is that those last few years are likely to be pretty rough as the number of pitchers that perform past 35 years old is a small list. At over $31 million a year in those later years, that is not a risk the Braves were willing to take and that isn’t even factoring in Fried’s injury risk.
Good for Fried in getting his bag and turning his outstanding performance with the Braves into a generational payday. Hopefully he continues to crush it in New York. However, just because he is playing well now doesn’t mean that the Braves still didn’t make the right call in letting him go.
