ATLANTA -- Braves catcher Tyler Flowers was happy he didn’t have to do any convincing when he approached Max Fried after Friday night’s 8-4 loss to the Rockies and told him he pitched as well in this start as he had in each of the four stellar ones that preceded it.

“He already had that assessment of himself, which is great,” Flowers said. “That’s the kind of confidence you’ve got to carry to be consistent at this level.”

Fried entered this series opener at SunTrust Park with MLB’s second-best ERA (1.38) and exited it with a better understanding of how just a few pitches can often determine the outcome of a game. Trevor Story and Nolan Arenado accounted for most of the damage incurred by the Braves’ southpaw, who allowed four earned runs over 5 1/3 innings. This talented duo homered against the first two pitches of the fourth and accounted for two of the three doubles that started Colorado’s two-run sixth.

To pair his top two right-handed hitters together in this lineup against Fried, Rockies manager Bud Black moved Arenado from the four-hole to the three-hole.

“Putting those guys back-to-back, those are two really good hitters and they do a lot of damage against lefties,” Fried said. “You have to pick your spots. When I made the mistakes, they were able to take advantage.”

Fried conceded his biggest mistake was the changeup Story drilled to open Colorado's scoring; left fielder Ronald Acuna Jr. nearly pulled it back in, but the ball fell out of his glove as he hung over the outfield wall. When Arenado homered on the low and inner third curveball that followed, he may have benefited from having seen the curveball with four of the six two-strike pitches he saw before striking out in the first.

“That helped me out, for sure, the next two at-bats,” Arenado said. “You don’t want to strike out but he made his pitches. He beat me there. Then when Story hit the homer I was trying to get something up, and I hit the curveball.”

Those two home runs alone matched the number of extra-base hits Fried had allowed within his previous four starts. Unfortunately for the young southpaw, that total grew again in the sixth when Story, Arenado and Daniel Murphy recorded three consecutive doubles against fastballs.

“Part of my gameplan was to go out and attack them,” Fried said. “I think it was just one of those days where it didn’t fall the right way.”

While Fried’s curveball certainly appears to be a plus pitch, it may become even more effective if he extends the success he had while throwing his recently developed slider. The pitch induced four whiffs and three called strikes. The lone slider put in play was the fourth-inning single David Dahl produced with a 77.2 mph exit velocity.

Fried used the slider to record the last of his season-high eight strikeouts against Dahl in the sixth.

“He’s got the confidence in [the slider] now,” said Flowers, who produced his third career two-homer game. “So we’re kind of identifying the guys who are more susceptible to that pitch than the breaking ball. He did a great job using it.”

Fried was certainly pleased with the effectiveness of his slider and he certainly wasn’t distraught after becoming the latest of the many pitchers who have been victimized by Arenado and Story. He wasn’t going to carry a perfect record and sub-2.00 ERA throughout the season. But even after this loss, there was reason to believe a genuine sense of confidence will stick with him for a long time.

“After every start, I try to take some positives and some negatives and be able to stay as even keeled as possible,” Fried said. “You don’t want to dwell on an outing you might not have been happy with or with one where you threw really well.”