Erick Fedde's third start of the season seemed like the sort of outing that would make you worry about him.
When a lower slot right-hander remakes his arsenal around a revamped sinker-sweeper combination, "What does he got for lefties?" should be the first follow-up question. A Logan Webb-style split-change was the first answer, but when both left-hander Naylor brothers and Steven Kwan took Fedde deep as a 5-0 lead went by the boards in Cleveland in early April, it looked as though lefty-heavy lineups might be a season-long liability for the Sox's primary free agent acquisition.
And there was a point before Fedde's mid-career reinvention where that might have been true.
"There were definitely times where I faced hitters and I felt like I had nothing for them," Fedde said. "You're almost feel like you're hoping for them to get themselves out rather than me pitching to get them out."
But two starts later in Minneapolis proved to be an inflection point. Facing a lefty-heavy Twins lineup that had leaned out and hammered Jonathan Cannon's sinkers and changeups the night before, Fedde turned a cutter that had been his fourth pitch in terms of usage into his primary weapon, running it up-and-in repeatedly to southpaw swingers while striking out 11. In a rematch against Cleveland last Thursday, he pulled off the same trick en route to six scoreless frames.
"He's done a really good job of getting in on lefties up and in, so they can't just lean out over [the plate]," said pitching coach Ethan Katz. "He had to face the Twins after Cannon faced them and it's really tough when you've got two guys that are similar following the next guy, and he did a really nice job after that. He does enough work up and in where they can't lean out over, and that's a big deal when you're talking about a sinkerball guy that has a really good changeup that he relies on heavily. He's able to combat those guys, and pivoting the next time around and giving different looks."
Unlike the sweeper and split-changeup, the cutter is not a recent addition to Fedde's arsenal. Rangers pitching coach Mike Maddux was working the same role with Washington when Fedde first debuted in 2017 and introduced it to him. And as Fedde struggled significantly against left-handers in 2018 and 2019, he spent a lot of talking to his then-teammate Max Scherzer about refining it.
As good as those sources sound, it doesn't require listening to Nationals beat writers gawk at how newly confident Fedde looked strutting off the mound while dominating his former team last week, to glean that he's reached a new level with the pitch. It's a testament to the consistency he feels out of his lower arm slot. He's throwing the pitch at the highest frequency of his career, and unless you want to get really technical about the 27 cutters Fedde threw as a rookie, it's generating the softest opposing contact (82.7 mph exit velocity) it ever has.
"I just command it so much better," Fedde said. "I've even started using it to righties more. I'm so comfortable with it now that I can put it inside or outside. Obviously with lefties I use my splitter a lot more than my sweeper. Either way, I still feel comfortable having three...and a half pitches to either side of the plate."
Which is the real majesty of Fedde's arsenal at the moment, rather than the cutter becoming a superweapon or any of his pitches standing out as one of the best in baseball, as it'll grade out around average by many stuff algorithms. His strikeout rate (22.3 percent) is almost perfectly league average, his whiff rate (21.7 percent) is solidly below, and he has a clear ability to generate grounders (45.1 percent) situationally, but does not pile them up at a huge volume. It's not that Fedde's arsenal blows you away, it's that it all coheres to give him an options to feel like he's got an attack plan against any hitter.
A benefit that Fedde kept talking up is that having a pitch that bores in on left-handers actually sets up opportunities to use his sinker against them as well; a pitch that requires incredible precision when it's used on its own against opposite-handed hitters. It's representative of how the whole package winds up looking like improved command, even if the secret ingredient is just all the different pitches that opposing hitters have to consider giving him a larger margin for error.
"The confidence of the stuff is that I'm never trying to overthrow or try to make something better than it normally is," Fedde said. "That just gives me the ability to stay within myself and put the ball where it needs to be. I'm not like, 'This has to be the nastiest sinker of my life because if I don't do that it's going to be hit hard.' That's now where I'm at right now. It's a good thing."
For a last place White Sox team, Fedde's renaissance serves a lot of purposes beyond giving the fan base and clubhouse a respite from losing -- as much as he can, at least. He establishes a White Sox footprint in the KBO, which has become an important proving ground for players making mid-career adjustments. Brian Bannister spoke in spring training about wanting to establish the Sox as a destination where pitchers feel they can revitalize their careers, and few starters look as thoroughly revitalized as Fedde.
After a shortlist contender for his worst start of the year earlier this week in Toronto, Fedde recovered Saturday for 6⅓ scoreless innings against the Orioles, the fifth-best scoring offense in the sport.
"Today, executed some front-door sinkers, something I’ve been working on," Fedde said postgame of another wrinkle he's able to offer to left-handers because of his cutter's effectiveness. "If I can get them focusing up and in at any time, or then the changeup gets better if they’re just looking changeup It's more stuff to throw up and in. It’s, in the big scope, another weapon."
The display dropped Fedde's ERA to 2.80 in 11 starts. With the piecemeal manner in which the 31-year-old compiles high-level results, teams might as large of a sample as Fedde and the Sox can put together over the next two months. But already it broadly looks like a pitcher a contender would sell a future asset or two for the privilege of having for two playoff runs.
"You’ve got to weigh your upcoming season, what you have in the farm system, those types of things can change fairly quickly based on the needs you have internally, it’s got to match up with other clubs," said Chris Getz, whose Double-A rotation is teeming with more long-term starter candidates. "We’re open on players on our club just because we know we’ve got to make strides to get back into a competitive team here at the AL Central."
The team's overall performance doesn't encourage us to think about anything other than value at the trade deadline, and the first two months have largely been a difficult experience for everyone involved. But breaking through the silence of a quiet postgame clubhouse is Fedde, clearly sounding more at peace with his game than he ever has.
"If one thing isn't feeling that great one day, I also have three other things to lean on," Fedde said. "That's a good feeling,"
