Erick Fedde has not been good for the Cardinals and we shouldn't be afraid to say it

All offseason, I slammed the table and shouted from the rooftops that holding onto Erick Fedde would be a huge mistake by the St. Louis Cardinals.

Unfortunately, that fear of mine seems to have come true. Fedde has not been good for the Cardinals this year, and it shouldn't be hard to say that out loud. But after listening to how some media have defended Fedde this year in the aftermath of his brutal start against the Chicago Cubs this week, there are still many who refuse to see how his traditional metrics are finally catching up to his poor, expected numbers, and that is not a good thing.

Erick Fedde's regression has been a huge problem for the Cardinals

After Fedde's terrible outing on Wednesday, where he allowed seven runs in 3.2 innings of work, I tweeted out the following X, and it sparked quite a bit of discussion.

This prompted a good ole fashioned debate between myself and Brenden Schaeffer, who many of you probably know as a Cardinals writer for KMOV and STL Sports Central, as well as his awesome daily Cardinals podcast, as we jumped on a live stream on YouTube to discuss our disagreement on the topic of should the Cardinals should have traded Erick Fedde. This revitalization of our dormant podcast on his channel, titled "Philosophical Differences", was a fun hour-long discussion, and we plan on bringing back the podcast consistently again after the 4th of July weekend. I encouraged you to check it out here or down below.

Let me be clear, this conversation with Schaeffer, even though we disagreed on whether or not the Cardinals should have traded Fedde, is not what I am referring to when I say that some in the media refuse to acknowledge Fedde's struggles. We mainly focused on the decision to hold onto Fedde in this podcast. But I saw a number of members of the media, both during and after Fedde's start, continue to defend Fedde's performance this year in a way that feels disengenuous to what we can see with our eyes and what the numbers really tell us.

Some pointed to the fact that he had the best ERA in the Cardinals' rotation heading into his last start...despite the fact that he had one of the worst xERA and xFIP ratings in all of baseball prior to that blowup. I heard some on the local radio the morning after accuse fans of "coming out of the woodwork" to criticize the decision to hold onto Fedde and claiming that he has "done his job" this year by providing the Cardinals with innings and giving them a chance to win. I'd like to point out that Fedde is in the bottom 35% of qualified starters in innings pitched and ranks tied for 54th in baseball in quality starts with 21 other starters, meaning he has just one more quality start than the 76th-ranked starter in baseball.

Speaking for myself, I went back and counted, and I published at least nine stories during the offseason, five during spring training, and four during this season prior to that start that strongly advocated for Fedde to be traded during the offseason, or calling it a major mistake not to trade him. On top of that, I mentioned it countless times on other stories I wrote and said it all the time on X and my podcast "Dealin' the Cards". I say that because I know of many others who have been shouting it for months too, so to claim that it's just a reaction to the bad start against the Cubs is just plain wrong.

So, let's dive even deeper into why Fedde has been bad this year, since so many in the media refuse to.

• After Wednesday's start against the Cubs, Fedde's ERA no longer leads the Cardinals and sits at 4.11 on the year. I'm not going to act like that is bad, but it is not good. Just because someone's ERA is low does not mean they have been good. I don't think anyone could have said with a straight face that Fedde was pitching better than Sonny Gray and Matthew Liberatore when his ERA was lower than theirs. His ERA is now 48th among the 73 qualified starters and 78th among the 135 starters who've thrown at least 50 innings this year.
• Among qualified starters, Fedde has the fifth-worst xERA (5.20) and second-worst xFIP (5.05), which both of those metrics take into account how many runs you were expected to give up, considering the quality of contact he was allowing. Fedde ranks in the 10th percentile in xBA, 19th percentile in average exit velocity allowed, and 29th in hard-hit percentage off of him.
• On top of that, his well-above-average command that helped him produce at a much higher level last year has cratered completely. Last year, Fedde ranked in the 63rd percentile in BB%, but that has dropped all the way to the 25th percentile this year.
• What led to success for Fedde last year ultimately came down to limiting base runners. Even with a very similar BABIP to what he had last year, Fedde's WHIP now ranks 13th-worst among qualified starters as opposed to the 25th best among starters last year.
• Fedde has never been a swing-and-miss guy, and that wasn't a problem last year when he was limiting base runners and hard contact. But now that he walks guys at a higher rate than 75% of starters in baseball, and batted balls are expected to be hits at a higher rate than 90% of qualified starters as well, it becomes even more glaring. Unfortunately for Fedde, his K% has dropped from 21.2% in 2024 down to 15.2%, which ranks in the bottom 4% of all starters. His whiff percentage is now down in the 6th percentile as well. It's bad!

I reached out to my friend Nate Schwartz, who does some great work over on Pitcher List, and he has some additional notes on Fedde that just continue to hammer the point home.

• One thing I did not mention yet is how Fedde is carrying an extremely low home run rate, something Schwartz pointed out to me. His HR/9 is 10 points lower than last year and 57 points lower than his career norm, and if he sees any spike in that the rest of the year, he will allow a lot more runs due to the constant traffic he is seeing on the basepaths.
• Schwartz added to the WHIP conversation from earlier by sharing that Fedde's Str-ICR, which measures a pitcher's ability to throw strikes and limit damage, something Fedde must do well with the way he pitches, and it ranks in the 4th percentile in all of baseball this year.
• Going back to the damage he's allowing, not only is his xwOBACON 24 points higher this year compared to last year, but his actual wOBACON is five points lower, too. wOBACON simply measures how much damage a batter does when they hit the baseball. These numbers suggest that Fedde's performance thus far is an extreme outlier and that he is overperforming what he should be when it comes to limiting damage.
• Schwartz also pointed out how, even though we all know Fedde doesn't miss bats, the way he did so best before, which was his cutter/sweeper that he throws against RHB, has seen its put away rate drop significantly this year, causing him to throw more pitches, have less strikeouts, and give batters even more of a chance to do damage.
• Lastly, Schwartz also referred me to a great piece before the season by FanGraph's Ben Clemens, who pointed out that while Fedde's first half-numbers were really encouraging last year, he regressed in the second half and was a perfect "sell now before it's too late" candidate for the Cardinals, as pitching is always in need around the sport and teams were clearly interested in Fedde. Clemens pointed to how Fedde saw success on the mound when he was precise with hitting his locations last year, but guess what? He isn't doing that anymore.

I don't like writing a whole piece centered on picking apart Fedde. I really don't. I felt compelled to do this because not only are many in the media refusing to acknowledge that he has not been good this year, but they also seem to talk down to fans or content creators who have pointed that out.

Look, Fedde is a major league-caliber starter and may have some good days ahead of him. He figured it out once, I think he can do so again. But guess what? He's not going to be doing that for the Cardinals much longer (or at least, he shouldn't be), and so they should look to get as much value as they can for Fedde this offseason, rather than sit on an asset that had a good chance of depreciating.

This offseason, teams could acquire Fedde, who was on a bargain $7.5 million contract, to give them a full season's worth of innings, which is a big part of what would give him value to a club. They could work with him internally to try and capture the same success he he last year, and if he was able to, they would have been able to extend him a qualifying offer this coming offseason in all likelihood. If not, they at least got an arm to help them make it through the season on a team-friendly deal.

Sure, the Cardinals likely saw that same benefit from keeping Fedde, but that's not a luxury this team should have held onto. Not when the chances of making the playoffs were as low as they were for this team, and not when guys like Jose Quintana and Kyle Gibson could have been brought in at a cheaper value to provide the Cardinals with that veteran depth they felt they needed to have.

I applauded the Fedde trade when it went down. The Cardinals flipped Tommy Edman, who had not played at all in 2024 and was working his way back from a wrist injury, for Fedde, who was the best-performing starter moved at the deadline. But Fedde did regress with the Cardinals, the club decided to go into a "reset", and other teams were interested in trading for him. I get that part of the appeal of dealing for him was having him on a cheap contract in 2025, but plans changed organizationally, and so they should have pivoted on him, too.

I really hope Fedde turns things around during his next outing and makes this piece look really bad here soon. But for now, all the fears about holding onto Fedde have been proven right thus far, and I think it's time for us to have a more open dialogue about how much of a mistake that was by the Cardinals organization. Just a little bit of creativity this offseason when it came to moving Fedde and signing a cheap veteran to replace him, was all that was required, but I guess waiting by the phone for a Nolan Arenado suitor to call was just too time-consuming.