- Max Fried is on the 15-day injured list with a left elbow bone bruise and cannot return before Aug. 29.
- Fried leaves at 4-4 with a 2.81 ERA over 15 starts, his second elbow injury of the season.
- Carlos Rodon starts Tuesday against Baltimore, his first major league appearance since June 28.
- New York is +775 to win the World Series and +320 in the AL East, where Tampa Bay is -340.
NEW YORK – Max Fried is back on the 15-day injured list with a bone bruise in his left elbow, the New York Yankees announced Monday, backdating the move to Aug. 14. Losing the left-hander costs the club its second-best starter by ERA for at least two turns, with New York 5 1/2 games behind the Tampa Bay Rays in the American League East.
The Same Elbow, The Second Time
Fried’s bone bruise in the left elbow is the same injury that shelved him for slightly more than two months earlier in the season, after a non-contact hyperextension in mid-May. He came off the injured list July 22 and made five starts before the elbow flared again.
His last outing came Thursday against the Seattle Mariners, one run on five hits and two walks with four strikeouts over five innings in a 1-0 loss. He had been lined up to start Wednesday. Because the 15-day clock runs from Aug. 14, he is first eligible for activation Aug. 29, which puts a return start in the final days of the month at the earliest.
What The Rotation Actually Loses
Fried is 4-4 with a 2.81 ERA across 15 starts and 86 1/3 innings, second in the rotation to Cam Schlittler’s 2.19 over 152 innings. Since returning July 22 Fried had allowed five earned runs in 24 2/3 innings, a 1.82 ERA over five starts.
That five-start run is close to meaningless as a performance sample. Run prevention over 24 2/3 innings is noise, and no ERA built on that many innings says anything reliable about a pitcher’s true level. What the month did establish was that the elbow held up under a starter’s workload, and that is the part the bone bruise has undone.
The rotation slot itself is covered. Carlos Rodon has been activated to start Tuesday against the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards, his first major league appearance since June 28. He went on the injured list July 3 with left elbow inflammation of his own.
Rodon is 4-2 with a 3.30 ERA over nine starts and 46 1/3 innings, and his 10.1 strikeouts per nine innings are a swing-and-miss profile Fried does not match.
So New York is not short an arm this week. It is handing the ball to a pitcher who has not faced a major league lineup in seven weeks, in place of the starter who owned the rotation’s second-best ERA, and the timing spared the club a choice between a six-man rotation and pushing a healthy starter to the bullpen.
The Board Prices The Pennant, Not The Division
The Yankees are 69-55 entering play, second-best in the American League behind the 74-49 Rays, with 38 games left. Their two headline futures prices across legal sports betting do not tell the same story.
The division board on legal MLB betting sites reads like the standings, with Tampa Bay -340 to win the AL East.
- Yankees Odds To Win The AL East: +320 (23.8% implied) -from Bovada
- Yankees Odds To Win The American Leauge: +290 (25.6% implied) -from Bovada
- Yankees Odds To Win The World Series: +775 (11.4% implied) -from BetOnline
The inversion is the read. New York is the shortest price on the American League board at +290, ahead of Tampa Bay at +350, even though it trails the Rays in its own division.
A division title gets settled over 38 more games of standings math. A pennant gets settled in three short series, where the front of a rotation carries far more weight than the depth behind it, and that is the part of the roster the injured list just thinned.
None of those prices is a probability. At +775 on the World Series betting board, a Yankees ticket has to cash more than about 11.4% of the time to show a profit, and whether a club that just lost one of its top two starters for two turns clears that bar is the entire question. The price is what has to be beaten, not a forecast of what happens.
What Comes Next
Rodon starts Tuesday at Camden Yards. Fried is first eligible to come off the injured list Aug. 29, and the Yankees have at least two more turns to cover without him.
