SEATTLE -- That Tuesday was a rougher start for Max Fried shows you just how historically dominant the 31-year-old lefty has been this season.
Fried was unable to provide length in the Yankees’ 2-1, walk-off defeat to the Mariners in 11 innings at T-Mobile Park, in what was the first time this season New York has lost a game he’s started. He allowed one run in five innings, his shortest outing since Opening Day, on four hits.
“I think it was just a mix of everything,” Fried said. “Probably command, and then also facing a team that had a really good approach. It happens.”
Just to reiterate: “It happens” was Fried’s reaction to a five-inning start with one run allowed on four hits and two walks. Coming into the day, there had been 1,236 starts this season; just 235 of them -- under 20% -- met that threshold.
“I thought the whole night for him was a bit of a grind,” said manager Aaron Boone, who was ejected in the top of the ninth after arguing a called third strike on Jasson Domínguez. “It’s a testament to how good he is, being able to limit them to one run through five innings on a night where he had to work very hard.”
Two of the knocks he allowed ended up being the total of the damage Seattle could muster against him, with Julio Rodríguez leading off the bottom of the fourth with a single and Cal Raleigh mashing an RBI double to the wall three pitches later.
But it was what followed in that frame that hurt just as much.
Randy Arozarena tagged the first pitch he saw straight at Oswald Peraza at third base. But Mitch Garver forced a six-pitch at-bat before grounding out, Dylan Moore drew a five-pitch walk and Donovan Solano ground 12 pitches out of Fried before eventually flying out to end the frame.
Fried -- who zipped through the first inning on just five pitches -- needed 29 pitches to get through the fourth inning, ballooning his total up to 72. His night would end an inning later, on 91 pitches -- a season low. The southpaw threw 4.55 pitches per plate appearance Tuesday, well over his season average of 3.74.
“It was a grind for him,” Boone said. “I thought that his stuff was fine. I thought they pressured him well. He had that five-pitch first inning, but then they took a lot of tough at-bats against him.”
The lefty finished with nine swings and misses on the night, matched with his lowest total this season. Meanwhile, the Mariners fouled off 23 of his pitches, his most since Aug. 15 of last year.
“They were in it every pitch, just being able to foul off a lot,” Fried said. “They were on time, and they were definitely ready for what I was throwing. Sometimes that’s the way the game shakes out.”
And that’s the sum total of the negative, because while Fried’s streak of quality starts came to an end at six, he only continued to have the best start to a season in Yankees history.
Fried’s 1.11 ERA is the lowest by a Yankees starting pitcher through their first nine starts of the season, passing Lefty Gomez’s previous record of 1.27 in 1937. His 0.94 WHIP is third among starters with at least nine starts.
After Fried’s night ended, Fernando Cruz, Mark Leiter Jr., Luke Weaver and Devin Williams combined to toss five perfect innings in relief. Fried, Cruz and Leiter combined to strike out eight straight Mariners at one point. Weaver threw two scoreless frames to lower his ERA to 0.47 in 16 appearances. And Williams worked around the automatic runner in the 10th, getting Rowdy Tellez to pop out harmlessly with the winning run on third and one out, before getting out of the jam with a groundout.
“When you don’t score in the extra innings, it puts the home team at a real advantage, so we were kind of up against it there,” Boone said. “But we threw the ball really well tonight.”
The bigger problem for the Yankees came at the plate, where New York went 0-for-14 on the night with runners in scoring position -- tied for their worst performance in franchise history -- and left 11 men on base.
New York went 0-for-6 in extra innings -- with Aaron Judge drawing an intentional walk in the 10th -- and has now failed to score its automatic runner in all five extra frames it’s played on the road this season. That set the table for the Mariners in the bottom of the 11th, who finally won it on back-to-back singles against Tim Hill.