With Gerrit Cole undergoing season-ending Tommy John Surgery today, the Yankees will be without their ace for the entire 2025 season. They’ll need to find a way to improve their rotation depth either through the trade market or free agency, as they’ve lost both the 2023 AL Cy Young winner and the 2024 AL Rookie of the Year winner for three months in the span of just two weeks.
Erick Fedde could be someone the Yankees target on the trade market to replenish the rotation and the Cardinals could look to boost their farm system by moving a starter who they’ve listened to offers for this winter. With New York desperate for a starter, this right-hander could stabilize the middle of their rotation thanks to his revamped arsenal.
Why Erick Fedde Makes Sense For the Yankees
Last season Erick Fedde posted a 3.30 ERA after returning to the Major Leagues from the KBO, where he’s refined his arsenal by adding a brand-new sweeping slider. The right-hander doesn’t get a ton of whiffs on that slider, but he’s able to limit damage contact, get some strikeouts in big spots, and command the pitch extremely well. Fedde won’t wow you with overwhelming velocity or insane movement, but he does have elite-level command to go with excellent sequencing.
He’s a smart pitcher who will shake up his pitch usage based on the hitter he’s facing, against right-handed hitters he threw his sinker-sweeper 74.3% of the time. Righties hit .221 with a .256 wOBA against those two pitches combined, and that’s because right-handed pitchers typically have more success throwing sinkers and sweepers against right-handed batters.
Against left-handed batters those pitches tend to be less effective, so Erick Fedde dials back the sinker-sweeper usage and uses his cutter-changeup combination 71% of the time. You’ll still see some sinkers, but the attack plan is centered around trying to move the ball up and down the zone to get weak contact and the occasional strikeout. Fedde won’t overpower hitters with high whiff rates, but he’ll locate the ball well and that is valuable with the right movement profiles.
This command-centric approach can get pitchers in trouble if they experience a fall-off in pitch quality or if they miss in-zone, something we witnessed with Marcus Stroman last season. So far in Spring Training we haven’t seen a concerning drop-off in velocity from Erick Fedde which is a good sign as last year Stroman was already showing signs of decline velocity-wise, and I think the Yankees could make Fedde better by giving him a much better catching situation.
READ MORE: Yankees linked to veteran free agent innings-eater
Erick Fedde dealt with some rough catchers in St. Louis and Chicago, as both teams finished with negative Framing Runs on both Baseball Savant and FanGraphs. Until the strike zone becomes fully automated, pitchers will always have their performances affected by the way their catcher receives their pitches, and the Yankees would provide the command-centric veteran with a catching room that can convert more of his painted pitches to strikes.
He doesn’t get many whiffs, so getting ahead in the count with called strikes is a viable strategy for him to try and put hitters on the backfoot early or freeze a batter to end an at-bat. He had a 16.1% Called Strike% which is a tick below the MLB average last year (16.4%), which I believe has more to do with the catchers he worked with throughout the season, as his most frequent battery mates graded out as some of the worst receivers in the sport.
The only catcher he worked with who registered a positive FRM was Chuckie Robinson, who caught just four of Erick Fedde’s 177.1 innings last season. For someone who needs to get called strikes to get ahead in the count, this puts him at a serious disadvantage, and I could see his effectiveness on the mound improving with better catchers back there. This isn’t to say his ERA would be better than 3.30, but the underlying metrics could definitely take a slight uptick.
Not only was Austin Wells a top five defensive catcher in the sport last season, but J.C. Escarra is someone the organization also views highly on the framing-side of the ball. The Yankees’ internal metrics view him as a 98th Percentile framer across MiLB and the best receiver in all of Triple-A (via Max Goodman of NJ.com), and that would be an immediate improvement over what Erick Fedde had to deal with last season.
What the Yankees have to part ways with in order to land Fedde wouldn’t be cheap, but I think even their weak farm system could conjure up an offer capable of reeling the veteran in.
- STL Receives:
- C/1B Rafael Flores
- RHP Carlos Lagrange
- NYY Receives:
- RHP Erick Fedde
I ranked Rafael Flores as the 12th-best prospect in the organization and Carlos Lagrange as the 15th-best prospect, which I believe is a strong return for Erick Fedde. The Cardinals would benefit from adding some more catching depth in their organization with Willson Contreras moving off of the position and Ivan Herrera having questionable defensive skills, but they also have an opening at first base right now.
Rafael Flores has 70-grade power, hitting baseballs as hard as 115 MPH last season which resulted in a dominant 2024 campaign where he had a 149 wRC+. His high pulled flyball rates paired with excellent swing decisions make him a potential middle-of-the-lineup threat, and if the defense continues to improve behind the plate, he could develop into a full-time starter at a position with tons of defensive importance.
READ MORE: Yankees suddenly have $13.5 million to spend on an upgrade
As for Carlos Lagrange, the ERA hasn’t been pretty over the last couple of years but his big-time arm is still there as he can reach 100 MPH on his four-seamer. It generates a little less vertical movement than you’d hope for a pitch that firm, but throwing that hard is still extremely enticing for an organization. He’s worked on a sweeper which could be a nasty pitch from his armslot, and the Yankees could get burned here if Lagrange ends up staying somewhat healthy.
This is a good gamble for the Cardinals to take, as they’ve steadily improved on the player development side thanks to the addition of Chaim Bloom, who oversaw the Red Sox rebuild that produced two top 10 prospects who were not drafted in the first round. St. Louis gets two top-15 prospects in my estimation, and that’s a win for one year of a player at a position where injuries can happen out of nowhere (how do you think the Yankees got here?).