Max Fried takes long road to brink of MLB breakthrough

In Los Angeles this winter, two young pitchers crossed paths. The meetings were intentional, a longstanding friendship forged while walking eerily parallel professional tightropes: Southern California prep superstars, first-round draft picks, Tommy John surgeries and rehabs, blockbuster trades and reignited prospect hype.

Through the noise, Atlanta Braves left-hander Max Fried and Chicago White Sox right-hander Lucas Giolito, former high-school teammates inching toward breakthroughs as potential major-league rotation staples, could always reach back into the past. The duo’s workouts in L.A. were different this past offseason, though; the dream is closer than ever. Giolito made his MLB debut with the Washington Nationals in 2016 before joining the White Sox during Chicago's Winter Meetings marathon while Fried’s ascendence appears inevitable after cruising through the South Atlantic League playoffs and impressing Braves officials in spring camp.

“I got my confidence back,” said Fried, who struck out 13 in the Rome Braves’ title-clinching game two years removed from elbow surgery. “I started knowing where my body was in space. And just being able to fit it all together, piece it together. It just felt natural again.”

The two Harvard-Westlake High School products are three months shy of their five-year draft anniversary. As fellow 2012 high-schoolers Carlos Correa, Corey Seager, Lance McCullers and Addison Russell established themselves as big-league standouts, injury rehabs stalled Giolito and, in particular, Fried. The left-hander took the longer fork in the road.

There is a growing sense in Atlanta, however, that the destination is just over the horizon — and fast approaching. In a universally acclaimed farm system overflowing with arm talent, Max Fried’s name carries considerable weight.

“It’s just a matter of him showcasing (his talent) and letting everybody else know what he can do,” said Braves third-base prospect Rio Ruiz, a former travel-ball teammate. “I mean, I already know what he can do because I’ve seen it firsthand.

“Just a matter of time before he blows up.”

***

Matt LaCour inherited floor seats to the best show in SoCal baseball.

In the summer of 2011, Max Fried’s high school, Montclair Prep, elected to shut down all extracurricular activities, essentially leaving the nation’s top left-handed pitching prospect navigating a de facto free agent market. LaCour, then the head baseball coach at Harvard-Westlake, an upscale private school in the San Fernando Valley, was keenly aware of the situation. Montclair Prep's baseball team had played its home games approximately 200 yards from Harvard-Westlake’s own off-campus field. “Everybody knew who Max Fried was,” LaCour said, a statement which certainly included his star senior pitcher: Lucas Giolito.

Fried and Giolito not only ranked as top-10 talents nationally, but also as fellow UCLA commits and teammates at powerhouse SGV Arsenal and Southern California’s prestigious Area Code showcase. Fried’s decision to join forces with Giolito in Studio City, Calif., provided a natural fit, a 12-mile drive to create a juggernaut.

Shock waves rippled through the state once he passed Harvard-Westlake’s application process. In Fried, Giolito and fast-rising sophomore Jack Flaherty — a right-hander who later spurned a North Carolina commitment when the St. Louis Cardinals selected him with their top pick in 2014 — LaCour boasted the greatest high-school baseball rotation in recent memory, three future first-round picks projected to cruise through opposing lineups. And pro scouts wanted to document every pitch.

“In Southern California, when you’re a good baseball program, you’re gonna run through and have the opportunity to have some high-level kids every once in a while that are draftable,” LaCour said. “But to have two in that senior class with Lucas and Max, who were not only draftable but projected to go in the top end of the first round, and then behind them have an emerging sophomore who everybody was kinda drooling after, created a buzz that you don’t see around high school teams quite often.”

A championship runway to the 2012 draft — then signing bonuses; then top prospect lists and minor-league bus rides; then, presumably, the major leagues — would have provided the proper culmination to an illustrious prep athletic career.

Success seemed to follow Fried naturally, effortlessly. As Ruiz reminisced on their SGV Arsenal teams, “Let’s just say I don’t remember losing. We didn’t know how to lose.” At Montclair Prep, he excelled on the basketball court. LaCour and Ruiz vouch for his reputation as a draft-worthy outfielder — "He could hit better than he could pitch in HS,” Ruiz said. “It was unbelievable.” — though 6-foot-4 left-handers with mid-90s fastballs and devastating curves tend to find permanent homes on the mound.

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Fried watched from that outfield post as Giolito walked off the mound in Harvard-Westlake’s league game against Bishop Alemany. That was the last time the two shared the field in a competitive game; the powerful right-hander and potential No. 1 overall draft pick had sprained the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow, an injury the Washington Nationals later deemed necessary for Tommy John after making Giolito the No. 16 overall pick that summer. The Wolverines finished the rest of the season shorthanded, eventually dipping out early in the playoffs despite Fried striking out 105 batters in 66 innings. The San Diego Padres tabbed Fried with the No. 9 overall pick, keeping him close to home with a $3 million signing bonus.

Twenty-six months later, as Giolito recovered and pushed his way to becoming a consensus top-10 prospect in baseball, elbow ligaments were once again the topic at hand in the two former teammates’ daily conversations.

***

John Hart and John Coppolella’s trade-heavy blueprint for rebuilding the Atlanta Braves’ farm system centered around leveraging patience. As win-now front offices chased immediate roster fixes from Jason Heyward, Justin Upton, Craig Kimbrel, Andrelton Simmons and Shelby Miller to Lucas Harrell and Dario Alvarez, Atlanta absorbed two losing seasons while setting its sights on top talent, club control, high draft picks, bonus-pool money and international spending sprees.

In a two-year whirlwind that overhauled an entire organization, perhaps no player epitomizes this approach better than Max Fried, a one-time untouchable Padres prospect available at the price of Justin Upton’s 2015 season and patience.

The lefty did not throw a competitive pitch in 2015. Twenty-one months passed between minor-league starts. At 22, he was pitching for Single-A Rome — the same exact level he logged a 3.49 ERA and 100 strikeouts at as a 19-year-old at Fort Wayne. Though he leaned on Giolito for advice throughout, Fried’s rehabilitation progressed with extreme caution: The right-hander resumed his minor-league barnstorming within 12 months while a grueling two-year process tested the limits of his counterpart’s patience. There are boundaries to their career similarities: “We have our own different paths," Fried said.

Padres GM A.J. Preller deemed a rehabbing Fried expendable during his infamous 2014 offseason extravaganza.

The Braves ultimately walked away with a deal Coppolella labeled as one of his front office’s proudest moments.

“Justin Upton was due $14.5 million,” Coppolella said of the December 2014 deal that netted Fried, Jace Peterson, Mallex Smith and Dustin Peterson. “ … Now take that $14.5 million, put $10 (million) of it into a trade where you get Touki Toussaint. So we still have roughly $5 million left and have got Jace Peterson, Dustin Peterson, Luiz Gohara (acquired in a trade involving Mallex Smith), Max Fried, Touki Toussaint. We feel good about that.”

Trades do not simply move pieces on an imaginary chessboard.

For Fried, the deal uprooted his entire life in Southern California at the lowest moment of his professional career.

“That was a couple months after surgery so it was definitely extremely shocking,” said Fried, who noted the Braves went above and beyond to make him comfortable, including transitioning his rehab coach Dan Meyer to Rome’s pitching coach last season. “I didn’t think — (the Padres) were obviously making a lot of trades. I had a lot of friends that were traded. And the next you know my name was in the trade to the Braves. It was definitely shocking.”

Fried entered his first big-league camp as one of the crown jewels of Atlanta’s pitching-centric rebuild. The organization’s composite No. 9 prospect ended his 2016 campaign with four consecutive outings of double-digit strikeouts for Baseball America’s Minor-League Team of the Year.

“You look at him and it’s kinda like, ‘That’s what they look like,’” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “What he did last year is exactly what we had hoped.”

Drawing individual attention in the midst of Rome teammates Kolby Allard, Mike Soroka, Touki Toussaint and Patrick Weigel, as well as Gohara, Sean Newcomb, Ian Anderson, Joey Wentz and Kyle Muller — a proverbial tidal wave of young starters unlike any other in baseball — is a tall task. And yet one name looms over Braves camp.

Just ask the Detroit Tigers … and the man Max Fried was originally traded for.

***

In Lucas Giolito’s first-ever spring appearance with the Nationals last March, the first batter to enter the box was 36-year-old Don Kelly, a career replacement-level journeyman boasting a career .230 average and 23 home runs. Giolito struck him out on three straight pitches. Max Fried’s first taste of big-league competition in a spring game? Miguel Cabrera.

Different paths, indeed.

“We looked up and it’s like, ‘Wow, he’s gonna jump right into it here, isn’t he?” Snitker laughed after the game.

One well-placed fastball on the outer half later, the two-time American League MVP and future Hall of Famer walked back to the Tigers’ dugout on a groundout. J.D. Martinez, owner of 83 home runs and a .357 on-base percentage over the past three seasons, suffered a similar fate. Then in stepped Upton, the former Braves slugger who wrapped his disappointing first season in Detroit as the hottest hitter in baseball over the season’s final month. The 23-year-old tossed a few of his patented curveballs to the three-time All-Star and one-time No. 1 overall pick before flashing pinpoint control on his fastball for a called third strike, the middle of the order for one of MLB’s best offenses set down without a whimper. Fried’s opening audition was over.

His initial stint in the Grapefruit League limelight ramped up the hype machine and underscored the rationale behind Atlanta’s patience. Fried possesses star potential, the type of talent franchises rebuild around, the type of ceiling that, five years removed from draft day, still receives favorable comparisons to past Cy Young contenders. When he squares off against three players with 15 combined All-Star appearances and makes it look like the old fall bullpen sessions pitting him against Giolito, challenging one another on who had the better command, the bandwagon takes on passengers.

Fried joins the next wave of Braves pitching prospects set to crash on the heels of Mike Foltynewicz, Matt Wisler and Aaron Blair — and the tide is rising. Along with Newcomb and Weigel, the 2016 Braves Minor League Pitcher of the Year, the high-reward wave of talent could arrive as early as 2017. For the moment, however brief, Fried appears to be the headliner. It is a moment he's worked toward for five years as a professional. It is a moment he knew was closer than ever as he shuttled between Las Vegas and his workouts with Giolito in Los Angeles this offseason.

And if this path requires a few extra steps, well, Max Fried has grown accustomed to taking the long road by now.

“I’ve experienced enough so far to know that I have zero say about where and what I want to do," he said. "It’s more about: I need to focus on, day in and day out, I need to get my fastball command better, secondary offerings. I need to work on everything about my craft to become the best player that I can be.

"Regardless of where I start or wherever I may be playing, it doesn’t matter, because you still have to do that to eventually get to the ultimate goal of being a major-league pitcher.”