Yankees’ Max Fried, for once, has no answers

TORONTO — By the fourth inning Sunday, shortly after 5 p.m., the clock already was ticking on Max Fried.

Everybody at Rogers Centre knew it, too. He still was on the mound, gripping a baseball, but the game was out of his hands.

With the Yankees already trailing by five runs and No. 8 hitter Andres Gimenez leading off the fourth for the Blue Jays, manager Aaron Boone made the bullpen call he never expected to make: Start warming up Will Warren.

Fried had just cracked 40 pitches and the Yankees couldn’t risk having him throw many more, especially to the top of a lineup that had been treating their staff like a batting-practice session during the first two games of this Division Series.

Incredibly, even the Yankees’ $218 million ace, a top-three Cy Young Award contender this season, was no better than mop-up man Paul Blackburn had been in Game 1 against these Toronto terminators.

Two batters into the fourth, after Gimenez’s infield single and a walk to Myles Straw, the sellout crowd of 44,764 bellowed a collective roar once they spotted Boone emerge from the dugout. Shockingly, Fried was done.

The damage was not, though, as the Blue Jays used him as a trampoline en route to a 13-7 smackdown that put the Yankees on the brink of elimination heading into Tuesday’s Game 3 in the Bronx.

“They obviously had a really good approach,” Fried said. “They were on a lot of my pitches. Credit to them. I didn’t get it done. It’s frustrating, especially coming out in a game like this. I needed to have a good one.”

Given Fried’s prominent role as chief saboteur, this was far more destabilizing than just a humbling double-digit defeat. The Blue Jays harassed him for eight hits, and the seven earned runs he was charged with matched his season high in pinstripes. It also was the most Fried had allowed in 22 postseason appearances, including 14 starts.

The engine of his destruction? Light-slugging infielder Ernie Clement, who ambushed Fried for a two-run homer in the second inning, jumping on a first-pitch hanging curve and hooking it over the leftfield wall (he hit nine homers in 588 plate appearances during the regular season and hadn’t hit one since Aug. 12).

Clement got the Yankees’ ace again for an RBI single in Toronto’s three-run fourth, but there was plenty to come. Fried also set up the avalanche that followed his departure, putting two on himself before Warren teed up a grand slam by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. The fact that Boone willingly dumped Warren into the wood chipper for his first relief appearance (after making 33 starts this season) suggested that Fried was hopeless to continue.

“They were pressing him all day, right out of the chute,” Boone said. “Just felt like it was enough there.”

Fried was supposed to act as a lefty firewall against these menacing Jays, who chewed up Luis Gil and the Yankees’ malfunctioning bullpen for a 10-1 rout in Saturday’s Game 1. And all of the evidence suggested he would be.

During the regular season, Fried was 11-1 with a 1.82 ERA in 16 starts after a Yankees loss. That’s as close to automatic as it gets, the very definition of a stopper.

While no one in pinstripes can challenge Aaron Judge’s MVP credentials, Fried was a clear runner-up during his Bronx debut season, especially taking over as the No. 1 when Gerrit Cole needed Tommy John surgery in spring training.

Some fresh Yankees imports have buckled under such weight, but not Fried. He embraced that huge responsibility from the jump, showing a mental toughness to match his elite pitching talents. And despite a brief midseason scare in which Fried had a 6.80 ERA during an eight-start span, he righted himself in time for the stretch run (and presumably October).

Entering Sunday’s Game 2, Fried was 6-0 with a 1.37 ERA and 1.04 WHIP in his previous eight starts, including the Wild Card Series opener against the Red Sox. Garrett Crochet outlasted Fried that night, but the Yankees had a 1-0 lead when Boone retrieved him in the seventh. The manager even got the brunt of the abuse for pulling Fried at 102 pitches.

On Sunday, Fried threw exactly half that number, and the decision to yank him didn’t involve much debate. Nothing was easy for Fried, who escaped some first-inning traffic with a double play but opened the second with a double by Daulton Varsho — Judge’s error on the hit put him at third base — before Clement followed with the two-run homer.

Fried gave up a walk and three more hits in the third inning, with the runs scoring on Alejandro Kirk’s soft groundout, another double by Varsho and Clement’s single.

The most troubling part of his outing? He said there was nothing unusual on his end. Physically good, same velocity, the typical command. But Fried couldn’t even slow down, let alone stop, the relentless Blue Jays. On this rare occasion, he had no answers.

“I pride myself in being able to change speeds and keep guys off balance,” he said. “And they weren’t off balance today.”

That doesn’t bode well for Carlos Rodon in Game 3, and if the Yankees somehow push the Jays to a Game 5, that just puts Fried right back on the Rogers Centre mound for a rematch.

After Sunday’s debacle, even if that happens, it’s hard to like their chances.

David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball’s Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.