TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Max Fried had no idea he was working on a no-hit bid and didn't realize he lost it when the official scorer changed a decision as he was about to start the eighth inning.
“I’m just glad that I didn’t have to worry about that,” he said after l eading the New York Yankees over the Tampa Bay Rays 4-0 Sunday.
Fried improved to 4-0 with a 1.42 ERA in his first season after signing a $218 million, eight-year contract with the Yankees as a free agent.
Speedy rookie Chandler Simpson hit a grounder into the hole between first and second with one out in the sixth and reached when the ball bounced off the glove of first baseman Paul Goldschmidt. Official scorer Bill Mathews at first called the play an error.
Fried was hitless through seven innings and was about to throw his first pitch of the eighth when Mathews announced he changed the decision to an error. Mathews said he looked at several video replays and determined Simpson would have beaten any throw to first.
Jake Mangum then led off the eighth with a clean single to center on Fried's fifth pitch of the inning. Fried allowed two hits in 7 2/3 innings, throwing 102 pitches.
Fried's career high is 110 pitches in 2022.
“I’m going to keep the ball and want to keep pitching as long as I can until the manager comes and takes the ball from me,” Fried said.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone hadn't been aware of the scoring change at the time.
“I thought the first hit was the first hit in the eighth there,” he said. “I saw afterward that they had changed it. Look, we’re not going to beat him to the bag, so I get it, but it makes it a little bit dicey when it’s within the game — or obviously with a no-hitter going on, but the reality is it was a hit.”
Boone was surprised the initial call was an error.
“I scratch my head at the official scorers nightly,” he said. “They throw an error up on the board at Yankee Stadium and then we go to these other places and they can fire up a hit with the best of them. It’s a different game in every other park.”
Boone, who was ejected during the top of the eighth, wasn't faced with a decision on whether to allow Fried to continue a no-hit bid as his pitch count climbed.
“I probably wouldn’t have let him go to 120 today or something like that,” he said. “There's a conversation to be had there if he gets through the eighth, where he’s at. I think he was a little bit gassed, so I don’t know what the final number but I wouldn’t have just let him no matter what, that’s for sure.”
Last May 11, Fried pitched seven hitless innings for Atlanta at the New York Mets’ Citi Field and was removed after 109 pitches in a 4-1 win. Joe Jiménez worked around a pair of walks in the eighth before Raisel Iglesias retired the first two batters of the ninth. J.D. Martinez homered just over the wall in right field on the next pitch off Iglesias.
New York had made three defensive gems to keep Tampa Bay hitless and led 3-0.
In the third, Fried hustled to first base to beat the speedy Simpson by half a step on a grounder to Goldschmidt.
Then to end the fifth, Trent Grisham robbed Mangum with a diving catch in deep right-center before throwing out Danny Jansen attempting to tag up and go to second.
Second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. sprinted 74 feet from his second base position to make a backhand grab as he was falling of Christopher Morel's popup to shallow left-center.
“I called him Flash Gordon,” Boone said, “came out of nowhere.”
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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
Zak Gilbert, The Associated Press
