This Cardinals veteran appears to be on his way out, and 3 teams make perfect sense

With the calendar flipping to July, it is officially trade season in Major League Baseball. The next 2-3 weeks will cement teams' outlooks for not only the deadline, but the rest of the season as a whole. These next few weeks for the Cardinals, however, may not matter at all on how they approach the deadline, and maybe more specifically how they approach a player: Erick Fedde. According to Katie Woo of The Athletic, she states that Erick Fedde is the most likely Cardinal to be dealt at the deadline.

This season has been very poor from Fedde after a resurgent return to the majors after spending the entire 2023 season refining himself in the KBO. In 2024, Fedde threw 177.1 innings with the White Sox and the Cardinals to a 3.30 ERA. Not bad for your first season back stateside. When you look under the hood, however, you see that he was likely always due for regression. Fedde posted a 3.91 xERA and 3.86 FIP to go along with a solid 1.16 WHIP. Those are not bad numbers by any means, especially when Erick was making only $7.5 million. Not only has that regression kicked in during the 2025 season, but lack of control and an inability to put away hitters has compounded into making him a bottom 5 starting pitcher this season.

Fedde has seen a decline in all four of his individual pitch whiff rates, with the most notable being his sinker, which went from a 20.2% whiff% to just a 10.2% whiff%. While Fedde never has been and never will be a guy who gets a ton of whiffs, there is a certain threshold that contact pitchers need to reach to at least be somewhat sustainable, and a 10% whiff rate on your most used pitch is not going to cut it.

The most glaring and obvious reasons for Fedde's struggles this season has been the decline in his strikeout rate and jump in his walk rate. In 2024, Fedde posted a 21.2% K% and a 7.2% BB%. As a ground ball pitcher not known for getting tons of swings and misses, this is nearly exactly what you'd want to see from Fedde. This has not carried over to this season, though, as he now sits at a 14.2% K% and a 10.3% BB%. His K-BB% of 4% (YES 4%!) ranks second worst among all qualified starting pitchers. So who would want Fedde? Well a team looking to fill innings for a cheap price may be in the market, so let's look at who that may include.

San Diego Padres

The Padres will always be one of the most active teams with AJ Preller still at the helm, and they are a perfect match. A team looking to acquire a SP to eat innings? Check. A team with financial constraints looking for a cheap contract or a team to eat most of the remaining salary? Check. And a team with a weak farm not looking to break the bank for role players? Check. With the Cardinals looking for ways to give Michael McGreevy consistent starts in the bigs, I imagine they would be all right with moving Fedde for even just a flier, something that may really intrigue the Padres.

Detroit Tigers

The Tigers have been one of MLB's best teams all season long and are primed to have a big deadline. While Fedde is far from a splash of a move, they are a team that could use help in the back end of their rotation. Detroit's starting pitchers have thrown the 8th-fewest innings in baseball (as they are a team that has been known to utilize an opener, this may be slightly skewed, but not enough to where this isn't still a need), so they may look to find innings to save their bullpen's mileage down the stretch. The Tigers did sign Alex Cobb in the offseason; however, he has been on the 60-day IL since the start of the season with a hip injury and has only thrown a total of 6.1 innings on 3 rehab starts. His last rehab start was on June 11th, and he hasn't thrown since because of a setback in his rehab.

Los Angeles Angels

As of July 1st, the Angels are one game under .500 and are only 2.5 GB of a Wild Card spot. With 2/5 of their rotation being occupied by Jack Kochanowicz and Kyle Hendricks, a move in an attempt to bolster the rotation would be welcomed, however small that may be. The Angels have one of, if not the, worst farm system(s) in the league, so they will be forced to look for players to acquire on the cheap.

While these are just three possible destinations, other teams in need of starting pitchers include the Dodgers, Mets, Red Sox, and more. Fedde's next few starts will be key in seeing who is in the market for a pitcher of his caliber.