“Every single year, the Yankees come to Spring Training, and the No. 1 goal is to win a World Series. I love playoff baseball. I love meaningful baseball at the end of the year. That’s what this organization does.” -- Fried (Photo Credit: New York Yankees)

It is the night before Max Fried is scheduled to take the ball at Yankee Stadium, and he describes the scene this way: He is on the couch in his Manhattan apartment, laptop open, video of himself pitching paused mid-delivery. Two dogs sprint across the hardwood floor, chasing a tennis ball while his girlfriend, Reni Meyer-Whalley, has a reality TV show on in the background.

There’s noise everywhere, but Fried is locked in -- studying hitter tendencies, measuring timing, evaluating pitch shapes. The setting could just as easily be a h

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