Erick Fedde’s Success Means The Chicago White Sox Must Trade Him
The Chicago White Sox have been a disaster this season, but one of the lone bright spots has been starting pitcher Erick Fedde. After resurrecting his career in Korea, he signed a two-year deal with Chicago this offseason—but he won’t finish the season there.
Through eight starts in 2024, Fedde has a 3.00 ERA and only surrendered 38 hits and 14 walks in 45 innings. His 23.4% strikeout rate and 7.4% walk rate are both the best marks of his seven-year MLB career. In his most recent start on Thursday, he threw six shutout innings against the Cleveland Guardians, striking out six with six hits and no walks allowed.
The White Sox have won four of the eight games he has started this year, which is noteworthy because their overall record of 12-28 is the worst in the American League. The team began the year 3-22, and aside from Fedde’s 1.7 WAR (Baseball-Reference version), no one else on the roster has more than 0.9.
Barring injury or something unexpected, he will most likely be the only White Sox representative on the All-Star team—assuming he isn’t playing somewhere else by then.
Fedde’s two-year, $15 million contract for a frontline starting pitcher will make him highly sought at the trade deadline. He was Chicago’s largest expenditure this offseason and the only player they signed to a multiyear deal. Given that the White Sox have no hope of reaching the playoffs, they will surely seek to flip him for the best package of prospects they can get.
The fact that he’s in this position at all is a surprise based on how his career has gone so far. In fact, a little over a year ago, no MLB clubs wanted him at all.
Fedde was a first-round pick by the Washington Nationals in 2014, and he pitched for them in the majors from 2017-2022. In 102 games and 88 starts, he authored a 5.19 ERA—20% worse than league-average during that span—with a 1.52 WHIP and 78 home runs in 454 1/3 innings. When he reached free agency following the 2022 campaign, his best offer came from the NC Dinos of the KBO.
Unexpectedly, he absolutely dominated in Korea. He threw 180 1/3 innings over 30 starts with a 2.00 ERA, 209 strikeouts, and a 20-6 record, becoming the first foreign pitcher in KBO history to win the pitching triple crown. He was honored with the Choi Dong-won Award as the best pitcher in the league as well as the KBO MVP Award.
The key to his reformation has been a revamped pitching arsenal, replacing his curveball with a sweeper and reworking his offspeed pitch grip. Instead of throwing a traditional changeup, his offspeed offering is now more of a split-change. In his last year with the Nationals, batters hit .364 with a .545 slugging percentage against his changeup and .321 with a .504 slugging percentage against his curveball. This season, they’re batting .216 against his split-change and .211 against his sweeper.
Fedde’s success combined with the lack thereof by the White Sox as a whole means he will finish playing out his contract in a different city. Still, signing him was a nice piece of business by Chicago’s front office, and the prospects they inevitably receive when they trade him will expedite their rebuild.
