Erick Fedde Drawing Interest From MLB Clubs

For the first nine years of his professional baseball career, all spent with the Washington Nationals’ organization, Fedde lived and trained in his hometown of Las Vegas during the offseason. But last fall, he was 29 and on the verge of being released. He had never been to a pitching lab, only heard the way his teammates and friends raved about the experience. So he put his home on the market and moved to Scottsdale, Ariz., a short drive from a workout facility named Push Performance.

Going to Scottsdale, going to Push, I just needed to get my shoulder right and dig in to pitch shapes and mechanics and everything like that. I basically needed a makeover.”
NC Dinos called around Thanksgiving, shortly after he was non-tendered by the Nationals, who drafted him in the first round in 2014. The KBO club, which is allowed to carry up to three foreign players, wanted Fedde’s response within a week.

He weighed the opportunity against MLB offers that didn’t guarantee a major league roster spot. He had never been to South Korea. He had, in parts of six seasons, made 102 appearances in the majors, leaving him with a 5.41 ERA. He decided to take the leap.

First, though, he was assessed at Push and put on a program. Push partners with Next Era, a physical therapy facility that was critical in mending Fedde’s shoulder. By the end of 2022, Fedde knew he had to get healthy before he could fine-tune his pitches. But because Push and Next Era work in tandem, they were able to tackle multiple objectives at once. Beyond sounder mechanics, they looked at Fedde’s fastball shape, overhauled his breaking ball and tweaked the grip and wrist position when he throws his change-up.

Push’s owner and director. “Obviously we did all the treatment on the physical therapy side. We built out his throwing program. We dissected his pitches. But first and foremost, we had to get him to buy in to the weight room process. And he did right away.”

“The reality is that I wish I’d done it sooner,” Fedde said of going to a performance facility. “Right as I was getting out of college, it was maybe when the Driveline ideas were just starting to go mainstream, and a lot of people in the sport had negative thoughts around it. The opinion I heard most was that it was just these guys throwing weighted balls as hard as they could and there wasn’t any pitchability to it. And then I started using some heavy balls this offseason, and it really helped keep my mechanics clean. My shoulder has felt better than ever because of all the stuff I’m doing.”

The biggest changes to Fedde’s pitch mix are that he now throws a sweeper — a slider with more horizontal than north-to-south movement — and has upped his change-up usage. Last season with the Nationals, he threw 39.9 percent sinkers, 28.8 percent curves, 27.6 percent cutters and only 3.6 percent change-ups. With the Dinos, he figures he is around 25 percent for each pitch, something that has been pushed by the team’s analytics staff. After struggling to finish off hitters in Washington, he has 149 strikeouts to 32 walks in the KBO, a league of patient batters who want to work long counts.

The goal, of course, is to get back to MLB in the near future. Whether that’s next year or whether it takes proving himself more in Korea or Japan, Fedde isn’t sure. He sees scouts from MLB and Japanese teams. He feels his reshaped arsenal could play against the best competition in the world.

“When I’m old and can’t play anymore, I’m going to be really glad I came here,” Fedde said. “It’s going to be so fun to look back at all this.”