4 Cardinals players it is already fair to be worried about

Erick Fedde

On the surface, Erick Fedde has been effective for the Cardinals in 2025. He has a 1-2 record thus far, but his 3.43 ERA is what you hope to see from him, especially when you take into account that one of those starts was a complete blow-up in Boston, while he's allowed just one earned run in his other 12 innings of work.

Here's the thing though, if you look beneath the surface, you'll see a lot of warning signs in Fedde's game this year. Yes, even in his six innings of no-hit baseball against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

First, Fedde's FIP (4.89), xERA (5.00), xFIP (5.52), and SIERA (5.89) are all drastically higher than his ERA thus far, indicating a fair bit of luck and unsustainable success based on the way he's actually pitching thus far. If you continue to look deeper, things don't look good.

Fedde has posted below-average barrel percentages, hard-hit percentages, and average exit velocity numbers from opposing hitters, and yet batters have just a .183 BABIP against him. That's not going to continue if he's allowing hard contact at the rate he is right now.

On top of that, while Fedde has never been someone to miss a ton of bats, he's doing even less of that right now, striking out just 12% of opposing hitters and ranking in the 25th percentile in chase% and 14th percentile in whiff%. If he can't miss bats, and when they hit the ball, it's hit hard often, that's going to come back to bite him in a big way.

Lastly, while Fedde figured out his walk issues for the 2024 season, he's back to walking hitters at an alarming rate, allowing 4.29 free passes per nine innings right now.

Do you see the cause for concern?

He's not missing bats, hitters are making hard contact consistently, and he's giving up walks at a high rate. Fedde has got to improve in multiple areas if he wants to remain effective from here on out.

While Cardinals fans seem to be overreacting about the Tommy Edman trade still, Fedde regressing hard this year would certainly tip the scales in their direction. All offseason, I clamored for the Cardinals to trade Fedde. I was not saying regression was for sure coming, but I was certainly aware it could happen. Sure, Fedde could fetch them a nice return at the deadline if he's pitching well, but man, the risk of waiting until then always felt like too much. Multiple teams were interested in Fedde this offseason, and the Cardinals decided not to pull the trigger.

Parlaying Fedde into a solid return this offseason could have strengthened their future plans, but instead, they wanted to feel better about their chances of winning this year, and prioritizing that was always a mistake.

Fedde has the talent to turn things back around here soon, and I'm certainly hoping we see him do so. But for now, the regression many feared would happen is showing up in his game.