{"id":768612,"date":"2026-08-03T05:24:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T05:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/768612\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T05:24:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T05:24:13","slug":"white-sox-move-erick-fedde-to-bullpen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/768612\/","title":{"rendered":"White Sox Move Erick Fedde To Bullpen"},"content":{"rendered":"

The White Sox are moving\u00a0Erick Fedde<\/a> to the bullpen following their acquisition<\/a> of\u00a0Luis Castillo<\/a> from Seattle. Manager Will Venable announced the decision on Sunday afternoon, noting that Fedde will stay stretched out as a multi-inning reliever (link via Scott Merkin of MLB.com<\/a>).<\/p>\n

For the time being, that keeps rookie left-hander\u00a0Noah Schultz<\/a> in the starting five. That\u2019s not guaranteed to continue through Monday evening\u2019s trade deadline. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic<\/a> reports that the White Sox are open to acquiring another starter even after the Castillo trade.<\/p>\n

The Sox have been tied to\u00a0Reid Detmers<\/a>,\u00a0Clay Holmes<\/a> and\u00a0Shane Bieber<\/a> \u2014 all of whom remain available. Russell Dorsey of Yahoo! Sports<\/a> reported earlier this week that the Sox had shown interest in Orioles left-hander\u00a0Trevor Rogers<\/a> as well. It seems they\u2019re poking around on both rentals and players who are under club control beyond this season. This weekend\u2019s trade demonstrates they have some financial flexibility. They took on a little over $5MM this year and an extra $10.75MM for 2027 in the difference between Castillo\u2019s contract and the Seranthony Dom\u00ednguez<\/a> deal they shipped to Seattle.<\/p>\n

Fedde signed a $1.5MM free agent contract just before the start of Spring Training. He has essentially held a rotation spot all year despite technically only having 12 starts, as he has frequently pitched bulk innings behind an opener. He\u2019s having a decent season overall, working to a 4.13 ERA across 102 1\/3 frames.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the most exciting profile, though, as Fedde has a modest 16.7% strikeout rate and has surrendered a team-high 20 home runs. Estimators like SIERA (4.67), FIP (5.34) and xERA (4.61) all point to him performing like a sixth starter\/swingman even as he\u2019s done a solid job preventing runs outside of a terrible May.<\/p>\n

It still comes as somewhat surprising that Fedde was bumped from the rotation before Schultz, a top prospect who has looked overmatched as a rookie. Schultz has an ERA near 6.00 over his first 14 big league appearances. He has much bigger raw stuff than Fedde provides, but he hasn\u2019t been efficient enough to find much success. He\u2019s walking close to 11% of opponents and has plunked another 2.4% of them. Schultz missed all of June with patellar tendinitis in his right knee and hasn\u2019t completed six innings in a start since May 1.<\/p>\n

Schultz is also approaching a new career-high workload. He has combined for 88 innings between Triple-A and his first look in the big leagues. The 2022 first-round pick hasn\u2019t thrown more than 88 1\/3 frames in a minor league season, partially because of a flexor strain that limited him to 10 starts in his first full year as a professional.<\/p>\n

Adding another starter would allow the Sox to either use Schultz in relief or option him back to Triple-A Charlotte. That wouldn\u2019t close the door on his long-term future as a starter. Schultz is still a work in progress, as one would expect for a 22-year-old with a 6\u201910\u201d frame that\u2019s certainly not easy to sync up in his delivery. The Sox just happen to be ahead of schedule as contenders, sitting 59-52 with a three-game advantage in the AL Central. They\u2019re two games above the AL West-leading Astros for a potential first-round bye.<\/p>\n

The Sox should expect to make the playoffs at this point. They\u2019re not going to deal from the top of the farm system for rentals, but that\u2019s not really on the table for any impending free agent this summer \u2014 aside from Tarik Skubal<\/a>, who was never realistic for Chicago. A controllable arm like Detmers or\u00a0Jos\u00e9 Soriano<\/a> would align with the broader competitive window. They probably didn\u2019t expect to be in the market for rentals like Rogers, Holmes or\u00a0Dustin May<\/a>, but they can afford to part with some mid-level prospect capital to try to make a surprise run in a down year for the American League.<\/p>\n

Sean Burke<\/a> should win the AL\u2019s Pitcher of the Month award for July. He has been fantastic for two months and would line up as Chicago\u2019s Game 1 starter in a playoff series. Castillo and Davis Martin<\/a> would presumably follow in some order with Anthony Kay<\/a> lined up for a potential Game 4. Castillo is having a middling season and Martin has pitched quite poorly since the beginning of June, so another playoff-caliber arm would be welcome. The Sox also figure to add a short-term depth catcher and ideally a right-handed leverage reliever in the next 17 hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The White Sox are moving\u00a0Erick Fedde to the bullpen following their acquisition of\u00a0Luis Castillo from Seattle. Manager Will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":768613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,133,4,10557,9009],"class_list":["post-768612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-erick-fedde","tag-mlb","tag-noah-schultz","tag-trevor-rogers"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117029913479154859","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=768612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/768612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/768613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=768612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=768612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=768612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}