Max Fried made his first start for the Atlanta Braves in three months on Friday. The rest of baseball might as well pack up and go home now.
Mowing down major-league batters and looking like one of the best pitchers in baseball is just like riding a bike — or it might be if you ask Atlanta Braves ace Max Fried.
After more than 90 days on the IL with a forearm strain, Fried made his first start for the Braves on Friday afternoon at Wrigley Field against the white-hot Chicago Cubs. The Cubbies, however, looked substantially inferior when staring down the southpaw on the mound, even after the lengthy absence for Fried.
Fried started his day with four perfect innings before giving up a single, but still faced the minimum through five innings thanks to a double play immediately after. He threw one more scoreless frame on the day, leaving the outing with 6.0 innings pitched (72 pitches) giving up just three hits and striking out eight.
Propelled by the return of their staff's ace, the Braves used a monster seven-run fourth inning to cruise to an 8-0 win to start their three-game set in the Windy City and become the first team this MLB season to reach 70 wins.
Braves: Max Fried returns to immediate dominant form, strengthens World Series push
And with that, we might as well fast-forward to the winter meetings or, at the very least, to the World Series. The Braves accrued the best record in baseball leading into Friday and now they have the best starter on the roster back in the fold. More importantly, he didn't look like he's missed a single, solitary beat.
Fried's return alleviates a substantial amount of pressure on the likes of Spencer Strider and Bryce Elder, who earned All-Star selections as they've held down the rotation in the absence of Fried and last season's 20-game winner, Kyle Wright.
On top of that, though, the Braves also showed their trump card that has been working regardless of who's on the bump. This is arguably the most potent lineup in baseball. Henry Rowengartner could've been out there throwing the hot, stinky cheddar and they still would've tattooed baseballs over the ivy. There isn't a weak spot in the lineup and it showed as a beautiful complement to Fried's return as all nine players registered a hit and with NL MVP frontrunner Ronald Acuña Jr. tallying a three-hit day at the office.
When you now pair that lineup with a rotation that has two of the National League's best pitchers in Fried and Strider along with solid depth with their starters with Elder, Morton, a slew of young options they've been rotating through, and an eventually-returning Wright, this has the look of a team with no equal in the NL and perhaps in all of baseball. Then you factor in that the majority of the roster is rife with World Series experience from 2021, and that case is only furthered.
Of course, anything can happen — it's part of the beauty of baseball. But in the case of the Braves with Max Fried coming back to immediately dominant form, it does feel like the "anything" that can happen is very much limited to "anything that involves the Braves winning and making a deep posteason run."