Cardinals New Pitcher Exceeding Season Expectations

The St. Louis Cardinals made an aggressive push to add pitching last month at the trade deadline.

President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak made a move to acquire pitcher Erick Fedde from the struggling Chicago White Sox in a rare three team trade that sent outfielder Tommy Edman to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The goal was to solidify the rotation, one that has dealt with injuries and has had the overshadowing concern of potential inning limits due to the age of the majority of their staff.

The Cardinals did not play the best baseball in August, and since the Trade Deadline, the team is 15-20 and as of Tuesday they have fallen to six games behind the Atlanta Braves for the final wildcard spot in the National League. Unfortunately, Fedde has something to do with that.

The 31 year old has made five starts for the Cardinals in the month of August and has gone 1-3 with a 4.23 ERA. His last start against the Minnesota Twins, recording his first quality start in a Cardinals uniform shows he is trending in the right direction, but there is still much to be desired for a player who was traded in exchange for a fan favorite (injured or not).

However, when you look at his season holistically, he is still exceeding the expectations that were projected of him heading into the season. On Monday, Shanthi Sepe-Chepuru of MLB placed Fedde as one of nine players across the league that has exceeded expectations this season. To make her argument, she used Fangraphs Wins Above Replacement (fWAR) as well as the 2024 ZiPS projection.

Here is how Fedde has exceeded expectations this season

Projected: 1.4 fWAR, 4.86 ERA
Actual: 2.7 fWAR, 3.39 ERA

The piece also shows some strong numbers of improvement from some very important pitching metrics in the year. Fedde's WHIP has decreased to 1.18 on the year as well as his walk rate going down to 2.6 per nine innings.

Although Cardinals fans have yet to see these great expectations while he is wearing the 'Birds on the Bat,' past results indicate he should bounce back nicely.

Fedde will be in the rotation next season as he signed a two year, $15M contract with the White Sox this past offseason, so much like Mozeliak continues to remind Cardinals fans, "patience" might be the best thing when looking at this teams' pitching staff.