It doesn’t hurt when the offense explodes, either.
With his team coming off back-to-back losses, Fried played the role of stopper once again while his offense was largely unstoppable as the Yankees rolled to a 10-2 win over the Royals on Tuesday night at Kauffman Stadium.
Fried turned in seven innings of two-run ball while his batterymate, Austin Wells, supported the cause with five RBIs on a three-run homer and two-run double.
Aaron Judge also crushed a 469-foot, two-run blast to start the night off before the Yankees (40-25) blew the game open with a five-run sixth inning as they cruised in their first game back here since clinching the ALDS last October.
“We’ve got an extremely explosive offense and they had really good at-bats all day,” Fried said. “When you put up 10 runs, it makes my job easier just going out there and trying to get as many outs as I can.”
The Yankees had scored 23 runs in three games against the Red Sox over the weekend but dropped two of three because their starters did not do their jobs.
The offensive attack continued on Tuesday, and this time Fried made it a breezy night against the Royals (34-33), whose lineup does not offer the same kind of threat as the Red Sox.
Still, in eight starts after a Yankees loss this season, Fried is 7-0 with a 0.83 ERA, with his team winning all eight of those games.
“You walk into starting 16 in a row and have your ace go out there and give you seven [was big],” manager Aaron Boone said.
The biggest concern of the night was Jazz Chisholm Jr. leaving the game early with neck tightness following a dive into third base on a steal, but he and Boone said they expect him to be back in the lineup Wednesday.
Fried’s offense gave him a lead to work with before he even took the mound.
Royals lefty Noah Cameron entered the night having allowed just three earned runs across his first five major league starts (spanning 31 ²/₃ innings).
But Judge greeted him in Judge fashion, clobbering the seventh-longest home run of his career (469 feet) for his 24th home run of the season, a two-run shot in the top of the first.
“That was evaporated,” Boone said of Judge, who went 2-for-5 and ended the night batting .396. “He’s playing in a different league. He needs to get called up.”
“Being able to watch him every day is a treat,” Fried said.
It was a 2-1 game with two outs in the fourth when Wells worked a nine-pitch at-bat — fouling off three two-strike pitches — that ended in a three-run homer to right for the 5-1 lead.
It marked his second homer in his past two starts, both of them off lefties.
The catcher then one-upped himself in the sixth inning and battled righty reliever Taylor Clarke for a 10-pitch at-bat that resulted in a two-run double for the 7-1 lead.
“Incredible,” Judge said. “What a great game for Wellsy. That three-run homer, what an at-bat.”
Wells’ double marked the first of five straight hits against Clarke, including RBI singles from Trent Grisham, Judge and Cody Bellinger — the 1,000th hit of his career, which made it a 10-1 game.
The five-run outburst marked the 16th time this season the Yankees have scored five or more runs in an inning, surpassing their total from all of last season.
The Yankees also got encouraging nights from DJ LeMahieu and Jasson Domínguez.
LeMahieu went 2-for-3 with a double and two walks while adding a strong sliding catch ranging into right field.
Domínguez’s three hits all came from his weaker right side against lefties, two of them well-placed bloops to right field.
“Just a lot of good throughout the lineup,” Boone said. “Then when your nine hitter tonight in Wells does that, that’s when you know you got a deep lineup. That’s what these guys are capable of.”
The only real damage off Fried was Jonathan India’s leadoff home run in the sixth inning, which pulled the Royals within 10-2.
They had also scored a run in the second inning — at the time cutting the Yankees lead in half, 2-1 — on a squibber to third base, a bloop to shallow left-center field, a double play ball that could not be turned and a groundout.
Otherwise, Fried largely dominated, at one point retiring 11 straight and later ending his night with an eight-pitch seventh inning.
While continuing to field his position well, he scattered six hits and walked none with four strikeouts, finishing his 14th start of the season with a 1.84 ERA.