Yankees’ Max Fried is only focused on one stat after shutting down Orioles

With the 2025 regular season coming to a close, the New York Yankees remain in striking distance of the AL East crown, with the Toronto Blue Jays still up by three games with just nine games remaining. But a performance such as the one starting pitcher Max Fried put up on Thursday goes a long way towards instilling confidence that the Yankees are going to make noise in the postseason regardless of which seed they enter proceedings as.

Fried was dominant against the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday, throwing seven innings of shutout baseball and striking out 13 while allowing just four baserunners all night long. The lefty put the Orioles through the ringer for the entirety of the night and prevented them from getting much of a rhythm, and his entire pitch mix was working wonders.

On the night, as Gary Phillips of New York Daily News pointed out, Fried induced 28 whiffs on 45 swings against the Orioles, and he already set a career-high for strikeouts in a single season, with 182. The Yankees lefty has also lowered his 2025 ERA to 2.92 — making him well worth the price they paid for him in the offseason.

But as impressive as Fried's statistics were in arguably his best start of the season to date, the Yankees southpaw only cares about one stat — winning.

“As long as we have more runs than the other team, I'm pretty happy,” Fried said, per Phillips.

Fried certainly did his part in making sure that the Yankees have more runs than the opposition. Holding them to a grand total of zero runs relieves so much pressure off of the Yankees' hitters to produce, and they already boast MLB's best offense to begin with.

Max Fried is well worth the big contract the Yankees signed him to

The Yankees were in the market for a star pitcher this past offseason, and in the end, they decided to prioritize signing Fried, who, when healthy, was one of the best left-handed pitchers in MLB for the Atlanta Braves. Fried, however, has endured his fair share of injury problems over the years, which made committing a $218 million contract to him over eight years quite risky.

But Fried continued to be the model of consistency, and he tallied his career-high for most innings pitched in a single season in his first year with the Yankees. But New York will be looking for Fried to continue pitching this well into the playoffs.