Erick Fedde Addresses His 2017 FanGraphs Scouting Report
Erick Fedde returned stateside in 2024 and had a career-best major league season. One year after going 20-6 with a 2.00 ERA for the KBO’s NC Dinos, the 32-year-old right-hander logged a 3.30 ERA and a 3.86 FIP over 31 starts between the Chicago White Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals. His previous big league campaigns had been relatively rocky. From 2017-2022, Fedde fashioned a 5.41 ERA and a 5.17 FIP with the Washington Nationals.
Fedde, whom St. Louis acquired at last summer’s trade deadline as part of an eight-player, three-team swap, entered professional baseball with high expectations. He was drafted 18th overall in 2014 despite having undergone Tommy John surgery during his junior season at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. When our 2017 Washington Nationals Top Prospects list was published in March of that year, Fedde was ranked third in the system, behind Victor Robles and Juan Soto.
What did Fedde’s 2017 scouting report look like? Moreover, what does he think of it all these years later? Wanting to find out, I shared some of what our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote, and asked Fedde to respond to it.
———
“As a junior at UNLV, Fedde was a potential top-10 pick until he blew out in May.”
“Pretty accurate,” Fedde said. “Going into my junior year, I was projected to go at the end of the first round, and just kind of kept climbing as the year went. Unfortunately, I was hurt just before the draft. I think I had TJ two days prior. But it all worked out. I was still able to go in the first round, which was really cool.
“Jeff Hoffman, who was drafted [ninth overall] by the Blue Jays, was kind of the big right-hander ahead of me. He blew out earlier in the year. I think he was kind of up there with me and Aaron Nola at one point. We were looking at possibly top 10, although I don’t know if there was a specific team.”
“Fedde’s fastball mostly sits 90-94 and will touch 96 with a bit of sink and run.”
“I’d say that’s pretty spot on,” Fedde replied. “I didn’t really start throwing hard until that sophomore-to-junior summer; that’s when I started getting up there. I was a consistent 92-93, but the big thing I remember was that I would hold velocity, if not gain it, as the game went on. That’s something I think scouts enjoyed.”
“Fedde’s out pitch is a slider, mostly 81-84 mph, that flashes plus but can get slurvy and lose bite when he doesn’t get on top of it.”
“Yeah, 100%,” he acknowledged. “I think I was throwing a sweeper before I knew what a sweeper was. A couple of years ago that became the total rave — it became the belle of the ball in the sense of pitching — and it’s kind of what I threw. At that time we would call it slurvy, but in today’s world it’s a sweeper.”
“His arm slot can get slingy and low, making it hard for him to drive the ball down.”
“I mean, at that point my life all I did was throw the ball down in the zone,” Fedde countered. “At least mentally, that’s what I was trying to do.”
“Not all scouts are enamored of Fedde’s delivery. His lower half is frail, often unbalanced, and at times plays no role in his delivery at all.”
“I was a thin guy,” recalled Fedde, who now stands 6-foot-4 and weighs 205 pounds. “I think I left for the draft at like 175 pounds. So, I guess I probably relied on whip and quickness instead of strength. I don’t know. Maybe that came into the idea of my having a lack of leg use.”
“If Fedde can improve his currently fringy, mid-80s changeup, he’ll have a viable three-pitch mix and above-average command of it.”
“Yeah, I feel like I’ve always been pretty good with command,” he said. “It’s something that I’ve leaned on throughout my career. The changeup really stunk all the way up until a couple of years ago. So that’s very true. I finally feel like I have a decent changeup. And then, as I got into pro baseball, I learned a cutter to add to my mix. Now it’s a four-pitch mix.”
“He projects as a sinker/slider mid-rotation arm.”
“I think it’s been kind of east-to-west that way,” Fedde said. “I’ve been in the middle of rotations. I definitely would never say that I’ve been a number one. But yeah, just keep growing and hopefully push to the top end of rotations. Last season was my best so far, for sure. I had a lot of struggles early, a lot of learning. But like [the scouting report] said, if I can get a good changeup… I mean, I think the changeup really changed my career.”
——
Previous “Old Scouting Reports Revisited” interviews can be found through these links: Cody Bellinger, Matthew Boyd, Dylan Cease, Matt Chapman, Ian Happ, Jeff Hoffman, Matthew Liberatore.
David Laurila grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and now writes about baseball from his home in Cambridge, Mass. He authored the Prospectus Q&A series at Baseball Prospectus from December 2006-May 2011 before being claimed off waivers by FanGraphs. He can be followed on Twitter @DavidLaurilaQA.
This might be my favorite series since you guys had Lars Anderson writing about international indie ball!
I second this. These are great.
I just laughed out loud remembering the couple of installments that featured Manny and the van.. Good times those were!
Double post
I usually find player interviews so boring but you’ve somehow managed to make them both fun and fascinating.
On a more general note, I love what you’ve done with the notes column and offshoots like this. You’ve not only carried on the Gammons tradition, you’ve kept it fresh and improved on it.
I know there are a lot of great writers here publishing great, advanced, and details content…but I think something this simple is the best series FG has ever run.
Just like everyone else says, these are great and fascinating. I’d love to know a little about your experience finding guys who are receptive to past reviews of themselves and what you may or may not say to them at the beginning to set them up for a thoughtful rather than defensive interview.
From just reading them, and reading David’s interviews with players for at least a decade now, he seems to have a good rapport and reputation and it seems like most players are receptive, even if they’re a little defensive or they don’t necessarily agree with some of the most modern aspects of baseball. Like when he’s talked to guys about analytics – an interview he did with Scosciapath stands out, and I think he shocked all FG readers by being downright reasonable on the topic, though he was anything but an early adopter or, really, even a late one – like the review a week or so ago with Matt Chapman. Chapman was was both receptive and defensive in his, but he was a little defensive because he was extremely self-confident. But the way I read it, it was almost with reluctance that he conceded a couple of “fair assessment” replies, and my interpretation was that was an interview David couldn’t push back on if he was so inclined. Compared to this interview, where Fedde may have took umbrage with the throwing down in the zone assessment, he didn’t get defensive, or even disagree, it was more of a ‘Jeez man, that’s all I was trying to do’ whereas Chapman was offended by his defensive remarks, which were…glowing.
I’m not sure if David was one, though I think he was, and Kiley,, maybe even Eric and Sullivan. There were a few FG writers, I think at least 3, that had horrible experiences with Eric Hosmer, who was just a real jerk. He’d make fun of them, trash analytics, try to embarrass them in the clubhouse, even in KC, even when it was his every-other-year of being terrible. Just an AH. He kind of stands out, at least to me, as the worst of what they’d encounter.
I think that was eno. I’m a royals fan but hosmer and moose seem like they definitely give off that dumb jock vibe. Tried to listen to their pod where they interviewed Vinnie P the other day and it was a tough listen. Straight out of 1995
Definitely Eno! I’m sure Sullivan had a Hosmer story too, he was reluctant to share it, but yes, the dreadful locker room story I was thinking of was Eno. And Moose was for sure involved somehow, there was something about Greek names or idk. But Moose was the most Greek of the names, but yes, now that you mention it, it was definitely Eno and I think that whole locker room was pretty hostile to Eno. It’s just Hosmer in my head as the ring leader, maybe that’s wrong, but I also feel like it followed and stuck with Hoz more than any of the other guys from that squad..
Either way, it was a story that I remember worked a lot of people up. And rightly so, what a bunch of jerks.
Straight out of 1995 haha. That makes a scary amount of sense! Like Channing Tatum in 21 Jump Street.
I never had a bad experience with Hosmer. By and large, he treated me with respect the few times we spoke (the Talks Hitting interview we did late in his career being an example). As for the earlier comment/ask about how players are responding to my requests that they address an old scouting report, I’ve simply let them know what I’m looking for. Along with being intrigued by the idea, they’ve all been amenable. More are on the way.
Thrilled to hear it, David – both in terms of players’ amenability AND the fact that there are more on the way!!
Thanks! Glad to know that the players have been on board with the idea
These are terrific and just really fun. Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest. The reports are already there; just getting the player’s feedback on bits of it really is genius in it’s purist form. Thanks for doing these and we all look forward to many more of them.