Max Fried made the wrong call, and he's the only one in this story who made a "call" at all.
People keep turning two pitchers into a morality play, but only one of them actually had a choice to make. Mason Miller didn't weigh his job against his family. His wife, Jordan, went into labor Tuesday afternoon, and the Padres placed him on the paternity list about 45 minutes before first pitch of an NLDS Game 3 he was already going to miss. There was no agonizing, no stance to defend. Labor started, and the list did exactly what the list exists to do. You can't admire or condemn a decision nobody got to make.
Fried got to make one. His girlfriend, the former Division I volleyball player Reni Meyer-Whalley, is expecting their first child any day now. He had the information. He had time to sit with it. And on Tuesday, with the Yankees facing an elimination Game 3 against the Rays, he stood in front of reporters and told everyone he'd take the ball no matter what.
"I've got a real supportive family that understands that this is my job, and it's not going to affect what happens tomorrow."
There it is, in his own words. The most important day of his family's life slotted neatly under "this is my job." He even reached for the supportive-family line, the one that lets a man frame his own choice as everybody else's generosity. His family understands. Convenient, that the understanding all runs one direction.
This is a private family matter, and who am I to grade how another man and his partner split the most personal day they'll ever have. If Fried had quietly done this, I'd have nothing to say. But he didn't do it quietly. He announced it. He turned a private choice into a public declaration of priorities, and that invites judgment: he got the priorities backwards.
Starters matter more to a team than relievers do, the argument goes, so Fried's presence on the mound is worth more than Miller's would have been in the bullpen. That's true, and it changes nothing. A start is replaceable. A kid's birth happens once. The Yankees have other arms, other Octobers if they survive. Fried gets exactly one shot at being in the room the first time. He's trading the thing that can't be redone for the thing that can.
The Padres handled their version the right way. They avoided elimination with a 4-3 win over the Brewers on Tuesday night, Jake Cronenworth homering and Michael King covering the final two innings on one day of rest, all without their closer. Miller rejoined the team afterward and was available for Game 4 if needed. Nobody's season ended because a man went to meet his child.
Fried's Game 3 outcome isn't in yet, so I can't tell you whether the choice bought him anything. That's almost beside the point. A win wouldn't make it the right call, and a loss wouldn't be some cosmic punishment. The call was wrong on Tuesday, before a single pitch, the moment he decided a baseball game outranked being there.
Miller had no decision to make. Fried did, and he chose the ballpark.
