When the Chicago White Sox signed Erick Fedde to a two-year, $15 million contract during last December’s Winter Meetings, the gamble became quite apparent. A rebuilding White Sox team turned to the right-hander who spent 2023 starring in the Korean Baseball Organization with hopes he could stabilize a rotation in dire need of veteran reinforcements.
It was a considerable commitment for a pitcher who had yet to prove his newfound form against the big league competition that knocked him out early in his career, but if his reinstatement to the major leagues went well, he could prove to be a valuable trade chip. Come July.
Although the White Sox team turned out to be much worse than expected, Fedde individually fulfilled his end of the bargain well beyond the most optimistic projections. He didn’t just come in and eat innings on a bad team; Fedde demonstrated that the adjustments he made that allowed him to win league MVP for the KBO’s NC Dinos would also be effective against the best hitters in the MLB. He might not be leading the entire league in wins (20), ERA (2.00), WHIP (0.95) and strikeouts (209) like he did with the Dinos last yearbut Fedde has been solid for Chicago, ranking 10th among AL starters in fWAR (2.7) and ninth in ERA (3.11).
Simply put, even one of the worst teams in baseball history had a chance to win when Fedde took control: At 7-4, he was the only White Sox pitcher with a winning record.
As expected, as the July 30 trade deadline approached, rumors surrounding Fedde’s potential next team gained steam. Fedde was a logical target for several candidates, not only because of what he could reduce down the stretch, but also as a valuable rotation piece moving forward considering his modest $7.5 million salary for 2025. Ultimately, St. deal in which the Los Angeles Dodgers sent three young players to Chicago to facilitate the landing of St. Fedde utilityman Tommy Edman will make his Cardinals debut on Friday afternoon against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field in a classic game of rivalry in the midst of a frantic NL wild card push for St. With all due respect to the Dinos’ push for the KBO playoffs a year ago, Fedde’s every start the remainder of the season will carry more weight than any previous start of his career .
While anyone who returns to the big leagues after playing overseas tends to earn the journeyman label, Fedde’s career up until last year followed a fairly simple path. He grew up in Las Vegas, where he was a teammate with Bryce Harper since T-ball and throughout high school. Both became first-round draft picks of the Nationals: Harper as the first overall pick in 2010 out of a Nevada junior college, and Fedde in 2014 out of UNLV. Fedde entered his junior year with a strong chance of being a top-10 pick, but an elbow injury that required Tommy John surgery dropped Fedde to the 18th overall pick.
He bounced quickly through the minors upon returning from surgery and made his major league debut in 2017.
Fedde has struggled to carve out a consistent role on the Nationals’ veteran roster. Although he appeared in 21 games for the 2019 team that won it all, he was not included in any postseason lineups. Still, he showed enough to warrant a bigger picture moving forward, and as the Nationals surprisingly quickly descended into a rebuild after their World Series title, Fedde finally got a consistent run in the rotation.
Did not went well. An arsenal that worked wonders against college and minor league competition wasn’t good enough against big league bats every five days. Neither his four-seam or two-seam fastballs had enough velocity to overwhelm opponents, and none of his secondary offerings elicited enough whiff or chase to be effective. While Fedde didn’t explicitly struggle with control, his lack of a true pitch forced him to repeatedly fall into hitter’s counts, leading to free passes or a ton of hard contact, and often a cruel combination of the two. It was a worrying recipe and the results reflected that. Among 76 starting pitchers who threw at least 300 entries from 2020-2022Fedde was ranked among the worst:
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1.3 fWAR (75th)
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WAS 5.42 (74th)
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5.10 FIP (76th)
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1.51 WHIP (74º)
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8.8% K-BB% (73rd)
It was no surprise then — even to Fedde — that the Nationals didn’t offer him after the 2022 season. He knew he hadn’t pitched well enough to secure a roster spot for 2023 and was ready to attack the winter head-on. in an effort to change his career. Having dealt with a shoulder injury in 2022 that hampered some of his speed, his priorities were getting healthy and altering his arsenal in a way that could be more reliable against the best hitters on the planet – something the Nationals failed to do. help you cultivate.
“I needed a game-winning shot,” Fedde told Yahoo Sports in an interview last month, “and I needed something to get people off my heater.”
Even before the Nationals officially canceled him in November, Fedde was already starting to work on finding solutions. He moved to Arizona, where he began working out and throwing bullpens at a facility in Tempe where several other big league pitchers train. Without additional velocity, the key for Fedde was to find new secondary weapons that worked well with his low-90s sinker. The first addition was a sweep thrown harder and with more horizontal movement than the traditional curveball at 78-80 mph, which was woefully ineffective with the Nationals. It was a new pitch for Fedde, but also one he believes he learned especially quickly, as it’s not much different than the slider that was his secondary pitch in college before his elbow injury. He also focused on reintroducing a change that had largely disappeared from his repertoire at the end of his tenure in Washington. His new arsenal was quickly forming behind the scenes; it was then just a question of who he would be defending.
While several MLB teams were interested in getting the former first-rounder on the cheap on a minor league deal with an invite to major league camp to compete for a spot, Fedde was focused on the bigger picture. Instead of going to camp with a big league team and hoping he would quickly stand out among a bevy of pitchers in similar situations, a different opportunity piqued Fedde’s interest more: a guaranteed seven-figure deal to lead a rotation in the exterior. The chance to apply his offseason work for an entire season in a highly competitive environment, where he didn’t have to worry about being shuttled between the minors and the majors, was appealing. Before the new year, Fedde agreed to a $1 million settlement with dinosaurs. He went to the other side of the world to see how his new material would translate to real hitters, and not just indoor bullpen sessions.
And translated.
Fedde authored a wonderful season in South Korea and, most importantly, he did it in 180 innings in 30 games – career highs in both categories. As planned, he returned to the United States with much more interest from MLB clubs in signing him to a big league contract. And when it came time to decide, it wasn’t just about which team offered him the most money. It wasn’t just that Chicago offered Fedde a strong financial deal, but also an almost certain rotation spot that wasn’t guaranteed elsewhere. Just as he did a year earlier, Fedde took advantage of the best chance to throw as much as possible. It ended up being a great fit.
Even through all the losses, Fedde is grateful for Chicago’s confidence in him to return to the big leagues and prove his pre-KBO self was a pitcher from the distant past. Additionally, he believes he has only improved since returning to MLB.
“I give a lot of credit to [White Sox pitching coach Ethan Katz] and them,” Fedde said. “They helped me evolve my pitching ability and pitch selection.”
“We talked about how to make the base look as big as possible,” Fedde said, suggesting that his younger self struggled to feel confident filling the zone because none of his pitches were good enough to get players out consistently. While he still leans heavily on his sinker and cutter, just as he did when he was struggling with the Nationals, the addition of the sweep and changeup have made his primary pitches much more effective in contrast.
Pitch Usage in 2021:
Pitch Usage in 2024:
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31% mower (90 mph)
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30% sinker (93 mph)
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20% sweeper (84 mph)
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19% change (88 mph)
“I have a lot more tools under my belt,” Fedde said. “I spent a long time trying to hammer nails with a screwdriver.”
Now armed with a much more complete arsenal, Fedde is finally fulfilling the promise he made a decade ago as a top draft pick. Having left the worst team in baseball to join a Cardinals team eager to reaffirm their status as a National League contender, the stakes are raised significantly, giving Fedde a new platform on which he can further prove his worth.
The story of Fedde’s return is already good, but it’s also unfinished.
