With New York Yankees ace and 2023 Cy Young Award winner Gerrit Cole sidelined for the entire 2025 season\u00a0after undergoing Tommy John surgery last week, the No. 1 starter role as the team attempts to repeat as American League champions falls to their offseason’s most expensive acquisition. That would be former Atlanta Braves left-hander Max Fried, the pitcher with the\u00a0lowest ERA in MLB since\u00a0the start of 2020, at 2.81.<\/p>\n
It was not too surprising, then, that the Yankees reeled in Fried with the offer of an\u00a0eight-year, $218 million contract, the fourth-largest contract ever for a pitcher, and the largest for a lefty.<\/p>\n
Even with those credentials, the Yankees had Fried penciled in as the No. 2 starter behind Cole. Now, however, the responsibility of anchoring the rotation falls to the 30-year old\u00a0native of Encino, California, who got his first taste of the Yankees’ biggest rivalry on Tuesday when he faced the Boston Red Sox in a spring training game in Tampa, Florida.<\/p>\n
But he could easily have been on the other side of that rivalry, as Fried revealed on Tuesday in an\u00a0interview with Chris Cotillo of MassLive.<\/p>\n
“They were interested and I met with the coaching staff and front office,” Fried told Cotillo. “Really nice, great people and I definitely considered them.”<\/p>\n
But in the end, it was a “gut feeling” that took Fried to the Yankees, he said in the interview.<\/p>\n
As the MassLive reporter notes, however, there was another factor that clearly made the Yankees the more attractive option for Fried. The Red Sox offered him, according\u00a0to a New York Post report, seven years at $190 million in a deal that fell well short of the Yankees’ offer and included a portion of Fried’s salary on a deferred basis. The lefty’s contract with the Yankees does not include any deferred payouts.<\/p>\n
The Yankees beat out the Red Sox to reach their deal with Fried on Dec. 10. But the Red Sox countered one day later by\u00a0pulling off a blockbuster trade\u00a0for another lefty ace, Garrett Crochet, sending four prospects including 2023\u00a0first-round draft pick, 14th overall, Kyle Teel \u2014 the Boston organization’s No. 4 prospect, who was seen as the Red Sox catcher of the future.<\/p>\n
In Tuesday’s\u00a0episode of the Red Sox-Yankees\u00a0rivalry, Fried shut Boston out over 4 1\/3 innings, allowing only two hits while striking out three and issuing no walks. The spring training game at George M. Steinbrenner Field ended in a 4-4 tie.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With Gerrit Cole out for the season, $218 million free agent acquisition Max Fried assumes the role of Yankees ace, but he almost went to the Boston Red Sox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":42557,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb"],"yoast_head":"\n