Erick Fedde out early in rough start vs Mets

Erick Fedde just didn’t have it last night.

Nothing was working well for Erick Fedde last night, in a 1 ¹⁄₃-inning, 52-pitch start against New York’s Mets in which he gave up eight hits and six earned runs before he was lifted in the second, with a runner on … who was mercifully stranded.

Coincidentally, not ironically, Martinez talked before last night’s game about the progress Fedde has made in his career, at adapting and adjusting when things don’t go his way on the mound.

“His in-game process is really good,” the manager explained.

“Like he can make adjustments now, whereas before, you saw him, he looked a little bit confused at what — he thought he made a good pitch, but the guy hit it hard, and he was like, ‘I thought that was a good pitch,’ and that might be a good pitch for you, but it’s a better pitch for the hitter, right?

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“So he understands now what he’s trying to do to attack hitters, and if things — if one at-bat goes awry, he corrects himself right away and he’s able to get back in the zone and do what he wants to do.”

Fedde couldn’t right the ship last night though. He gave up three straight singles and a run, after taking the mound with a 3-0 lead, then he issued a base-loading walk, but got a 4-6-3 double play, on which a run scored, 3-2, and a fly to left to end a 32-pitch first, then he gave up single, and RBI double, a 1-out RBI hit, and a two-run home run, 6-3, before the eighth hit he allowed ended his outing.

“Got the double play, they scored two,” in the first, Martinez said after what ended up a 13-5 loss, “and I thought maybe he’ll settle down a little, but he went back out there, and I didn’t think it was going to get any better today.”

“It’s brutal,” Fedde said of his performance, as quoted by MASN’s Mark Zuckerman after the game. “It lets the whole team down. If anything, if you’re able to at least go six and give up a bunch of runs, you put the team in a better position going forward. But today was just really unacceptable in a sense. I feel bad for the guys in the bullpen. I put them behind the 8-ball probably for the next week or so.”

Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images

“It wasn’t there for him today,” Martinez reiterated.

“His misses were almost right down the middle to a good-hitting team. It didn’t happen for him today, but we’ll get him back, five days, and get him back out there, but just a bad day for Fedde today, guys came in from the bullpen and gave up some runs too, I mean, that’s a good-hitting team.”

In five starts and 27 ²⁄₃ IP in the month of May, Fedde had a 1.95 ERA, a 3.93 FIP, 14 walks, 23 Ks, and .208/.304/.327 line against going into the game. How does it go so wrong when he was on such a solid run?

“Everything was — the location was, like I said — you can say he’s throwing strikes,” Martinez said, “but they’re right down the middle, and he knows he can’t be down the middle, so like I said, I told him today, I said, “Hey, look, some days you’re going to have bad days, we just got to forget about it come back tomorrow and get your work in and get ready for your next start, I mean, that’s all you can do.”