Cardinals starting pitcher Eric Fedde celebrates as a pop-up by Dodgers batter Will Smith is caught for the third out with the bases loaded in the third inning of a game Saturday, June 7, 2025, at Busch Stadium.
CHICAGO — Early in his first few weeks back from abroad and back with a major league club, Erick Fedde entered a meeting room at the Chicago White Sox spring training facility to see a white marker board.
That was the canvas upon which his career was going to change.
White Sox pitching coach Ethan Katz and senior director of pitching Brian Bannister began illustrating on that board the pitches in Fedde’s repertoire and the different metrics that defined them. They mentioned other pitchers they’ve worked with and how they utilized similar stuff, and they have details how best to attack the zone with specific pitches.
“I felt like I had all of these weapons, and they were like, ‘Here is how you’re going to use them,’” Fedde said at his locker Wednesday afternoon. “That just like this big, eye-opening meeting for me. I feel like it was a big moment for me.”
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Where that meeting and 21 starts for the White Sox took Fedde brings him back to the South Side of Chicago at Rate Field on Thursday afternoon. Due to soggy weather all evening in the Chicago area Wednesday night, the Cardinals-White Sox game was pushed back a day and into a straight doubleheader Thursday. It will be the Cardinals’ sixth doubleheader of the season, and the evening game will be played immediately after the 1:15 p.m. ӣƵ time first game. Rookie Michael McGreevy will be promoted as the Cardinals’ 27th player so that he can start Game 2 of the doubleheader and bump Sonny Gray’s start back to the weekend.
Fedde is set to start Game 1 — against the club that gave him a chance to reprove himself as a major league starter.
Before the board, there was the offer.
After a 20-win season in Korea where he won the KBO’s pitching triple crown, Fedde sought a return to the majors ahead of the 2024 as a free agent. The White Sox were among the teams ready to offer him a multiyear deal, and all interested teams were aware he wanted the certainty of starting. Such a guarantee was most likely to come from a team rebuilding or trying to catch a lottery ticket to contend. Fedde returned from Korea confident in his changes, and he said Wednesday he could measure teams’ confidence in those changes by “the finances of the offer.” Sox general manager Chris Getz made Fedde his first free-agent signing, and Fedde felt “there’s another person putting their name and their belief in me.”
Fedde signed a two-year, $15 million deal with the Sox in part because former teammate and former Sox ace Lucas Giolito vouched for Katz and Fedde knew of Bannister’s reputation for working with sinker-sweeper pitchers.
Those relationships were as-advertised even as the Sox spiraled toward a 121 losses.
Fedde won seven games while pitching for the Sox, and the game he won his No. 7 was Chicago’s No. 27 — on July 10.
“That’s the hard part of the big leagues — you can have the best month ever and then you have a bad month and it’s completely erased,” Fedde said. “That’s why this game is how well you can do over six months. They taught me how to use my stuff when it’s not at its best. Success wasn’t there as a team, but for me, I felt like to was very career-changing.”
And it continues to be career-shaping.
Fedde has spent a good portion of this season groping for consistency with his sweeping slider. In his most recent start — a 5 1/3-inning loss at Milwaukee on this road trip — Fedde had a sharper breaking pitch. He spoke with Gray about the pitch, adjusted his thumb a bit, and threw it harder. The sweeper touched 85.2 mph and averaged 83.2 mph, 1 mph more than his season average, and he got three swings and misses with it.
As he navigates the use of his pitches, Fedde still thinks of the whiteboard.
“It’s still in my head, for sure,” the right-hander said of the information. “To think about where I was multiple years ago to become a trade piece is kind of crazy,” Fedde said. “Almost too hard to believe. I didn’t pitch well with the Nationals. I have no hard feelings there for them letting me go. I did not prove a lot there. But reinventing myself and coming back, I had a chance to make 20 or so starts with the White Sox and proved to be someone who was appealing at the deadline?
“That’s a big thing for a guy like me,” he concluded. “For a guy who was just hoping to be a fifth starter and becomes a trade piece.”
Molina named Puerto Rico’s WBC manager
Yadier Molina will return as manager for Puerto Rico’s national team for next spring’s World Baseball Classic, setting up the possibility that his team will face the one from the Dominican Republic managed by Albert Pujols. Both Cardinals greats have expressed interest in becoming big-league managers, and they have followed similar trails to prepare — managing in the Dominican’s winter league and now leading national teams for the WBC.
Molina was officially introduced as Team Puerto Rico’s manager on Wednesday. His former teammate with the Cardinals, Carlos Beltran, is the team’s general manager and will choose and oversee the roster with Molina’s input. Molina managed the national squad in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.
Puerto Rico reached the quarterfinals that year.
Molina was the catcher on Puerto Rico’s WBC teams that finished runner-up to the Dominican in 2013 and Team USA in 2017.
The WBC international tournament is set for next March.
Minor notes
Quinn Mathews, the reigning Baseball America minor league pitcher of the year, improved to 2-0 in four starts for the Cardinals’ Class AAA affiliate after missing time due to shoulder soreness. Mathews pitched five shutout innings Wednesday for the Triple-A Redbirds, striking out six and allowing one hit.
Since returning to Memphis from the injured list, Mathews has a 2.30 ERA and 20 strikeouts in 15 2/3 innings.
- Outfielder Nathan Church, 24, hit his first home run since a promotion to Triple-A Memphis, and it was a grand slam that catapulted the Redbirds toward their 10-7 victory against the Orioles’ Class AAA affiliate Norfolk.
- Jose Fermin also homered in the win.
- Class AA Springfield (Missouri) can clinch a playoff spot Thursday night with a victory at home. Joshua Baez crushed a 454-homer Wednesday in a 7-2 win.
- Lefty Ixan Henderson took over the Texas League lead in strikeouts with seven in that victory. Henderson, 23, is 3-3 for the S-Cards with 77 strikeouts in 65 1/3 innings over 12 starts. His 2.07 ERA is among the lowest in the minors.
