On Fedde in Korea.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/09/03/erick-fedde-south-korea-nc-dinos/
Kind of hits home some of the stuff Slate and others have been saying about how behind the Nats have been on things like pitch shaping as well as mechanics.
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.
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First, though, he was assessed at PUSH and put on a program. PUSH partners with Next Level, 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 since PUSH and Next Level 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.
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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.
