SAN DIEGO — A line drive off his left glute, followed by a six-hit, five-run, two-out barrage by the San Diego Padres led to an early exit for Max Fried. If this was the final start of the left-hander’s distinguished career with the Atlanta Braves, it was an unfortunate way to go out.
No, scratch that. It was an awful way to go out. For him and the Braves.
Fried was charged with eight hits and five runs in two innings of a 5-4 loss that gave the Padres a two-game sweep in the best-of-three Wild Card Series at raucous Petco Park. It’s the third consecutive year that the Braves, after winning the 2021 World Series, have lost in their first playoff series, though this time it was at least mitigated by the fact few thought their injury-riddled team would make it.
Still, the Braves felt especially terrible for Fried, the pending free agent.
“Yeah, it sucks,” said Braves catcher Travis d’Arnaud, a fellow Los Angeles-area native and one of Fried’s closest friends on the team. “It’s not the way I’m sure he wanted his season to come to an end.”
For Fried, it was another postseason opportunity spoiled in part by pain. Fried said discomfort from a 100 mph line drive off the bat of the second hitter he faced in the first inning, Fernando Tatis Jr., worsened during the second inning when the Padres tallied six consecutive two-out hits against him.
That hitting frenzy began with Kyle Higashioka’s game-tying solo homer on a 1-and-2 fastball left over the middle and waist-high, and ended with a two-run double by Manny Machado and a two-run triple by Jackson Merrill.
“It caught me right in the glute, and it just seemed to tighten up going into that second inning,” said Fried, who was weakened by the flu before the 2022 postseason and wasn’t sharp in the 2023 postseason after missing time with a recurring blister.
Now, it was a pain in the butt. Literally.
“I tried to do as much as I could to get through it but just kept missing middle (of the plate),” Fried said. “I wasn’t making good pitches and putting them in good spots, and when you’re facing a team like that, you can’t be leaving the ball over the middle of the plate and giving them opportunities.
“It’s deflating and frustrating, knowing that we played a good enough game to ultimately win that. But I put us in too big of a hole and lost it. So, it’s definitely a tough one to swallow.”
Braves manager Brian Snitker said he talked to head trainer George Poulis after Fried got hit and saw signs of it affecting him as the second inning wore on.
“It was a pretty good shot,” Snitker said. “As the inning got prolonged, George said it affected the sciatica or something. I’m not going to take away anything from the Padres. They squared some balls up really good and got big hits.”
For the second night in a row, the Braves bullpen pitched superbly after a rough two innings from their starter. And unlike Tuesday’s 4-0 loss, this time the offense came alive, with Jorge Soler hitting a fifth-inning homer and Michael Harris II continuing his blistering late-season surge with a two-run homer in the eighth to get Atlanta within 5-4.
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— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) October 3, 2024
The Braves were beaten in two games for a quick postseason exit. But Harris and others, including Snitker, said they were nonetheless proud for winning 89 games and making the postseason in a year that saw six players from the Braves’ Opening Day lineup spend at least two months on the IL.
That included preseason Cy Young favorite Spencer Strider, who had season-ending elbow surgery after two starts, and 2023 NL MVP Ronald Acuña Jr., who had a season-ending torn ACL in late May. They played the Wild Card Series without presumptive Cy Young Award winner Chris Sale, who missed his last regular-season start and wasn’t on the playoff roster due to back spasms.
“Definitely can’t be too mad at the finish,” said Harris, who gave the Braves a 1-0 first-inning lead when he led off the game with a first-pitch double against Joe Musgrove and scored on a Marcell Ozuna sacrifice fly. “Obviously you want to be playing tomorrow and having the chance to play all the way to November, to be able to bring home a ring.”
But, Harris said, “This was a pretty positive season, considering how rough it was, having the guys we had go down and never having the same lineup since Day 1.”
Dropping three of four games in consecutive NL Division Series against the Philadelphia Series the past two years had one thing in common with this first-round loss: an injury-diminished pitching rotation.
With Sale out, the Braves lost the series opener after rookie AJ Smith-Shawver gave up four hits and three runs in the first 1 1/3 innings of an emergency start that was just his second MLB game this year.
They certainly expected things to go better with Fried on the mound, the guy so many teammates referred to as their “big-game pitcher” when they were asked what gave them confidence going into Wednesday’s game.
Fried pitched one of the best and most memorable games in Atlanta postseason history, six scoreless innings in a 2021 World Series-clinching Game 6 win. But he has a 5.10 ERA in 20 career postseason games including 12 starts. In his past six postseason starts, including the World Series win, Fried is 1-4 with an 8.28 ERA.
Still, before his glute began to tighten Wednesday, Fried looked like he might be primed for something special when he worked out of a base-loaded, no-outs jam in the first inning — after the Padres had loaded them without hitting a ball out of the infield.
Fried struck out Machado for the first out and got Merrill on a force, with first baseman Matt Olson making a strong throw to throw to the plate to cut down Luis Arraez.
“Yeah, bases loaded, no outs, and to get out of it,” Fried said, “you’re hoping to use that momentum to keep you going. And obviously the second inning kind of unraveled. It’s not ideal to give up a five-spot in the second.”
Teammates all hope that Fried and the Braves can work out a new contract before or after he hits free agency and Fried said playing for the Braves has meant “everything” to him and he hopes to continue with the team.
The odds of that might not be great, given the size of the deal he’s expected to get and the fact that Atlanta will return starters Sale and Reynaldo López, who made the All-Star team with Fried, along with rookie sensation Spencer Schwellenbach, and expect to have Strider back early in the season if not by Opening Day.
“I hope he’s back, I really do,” d’Arnaud said. “He’s given his heart and soul to this organization. He’s been the winning pitcher of World Series Game 6 for this organization. Had multiple ‘Madduxes’ for this organization. Taught a lot of young guys his philosophies and how he thinks when he pitches. Helped them grow.”
For the Braves, this was their fifth consecutive defeat in a postseason elimination game, their last win in such a situation coming in the 2018 NLDS against the Los Angeles Dodgers, who beat Atlanta in the next game.
They never gave up, even when down 5-1 and facing elimination against a fired-up San Diego team playing in front of an extremely energized home crowd.
“I couldn’t be prouder of this group,” Fried said. “It just seemed like it was one thing after another, and we never made an excuse, we just wanted to go out there and play our brand of baseball and win. It would’ve been amazing, it would’ve been great to be able to keep it going. It’s just frustrating knowing I was the one to take the ball on the last day and put us in the hole, to not give us a shot for tomorrow.”
D’Arnaud said. “For us to be down by four runs and to come back within one, shows the fight we had all year. Just unfortunate we came up short. It sucks our season’s over.”
Asked what he’ll remember most about this Braves season, Snitker said, “Just the tenacity, the drive, the consistency, the work ethic, how they never … everything that these guys went through, nobody was ever ‘woe is me,’ and they weren’t griping about anything.”
Snitker, 68, has a year left on his contract and said he’s absolutely planning to be back.
“I wish spring training started tomorrow, quite honestly,” Snitker said. “I just told the guys that. I can’t wait to get to camp and hopefully have our guys whole again. And I’m going to be excited to get there probably more than I ever have been. I said I’m exhausted but, honestly, I wish we could fast-forward and be there tomorrow. I’m serious, too. I can’t wait to get there with our guys and do this again.”
Asked if he felt the same way, d’Arnaud said, “Yes, very much so. February can’t come soon enough.”
(Photo of the Braves dugout: Gregory Bull / Associated Press)
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