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Posted at 10:30 AM EST. 

1:30 PM EST. This is the first game of a double-header so listed pitchers, Erick Fedde and Kyle Freeland must start. Freeland’s batted ball profile of 58% grounders, 16% line-drives and just 27% fly-balls after 116 innings is off-the-charts good. We’d like to see more K’s than his 72 recorded but a pitcher that can induce such weak contact and so many groundballs is worth his weight in gold. Kyle Freeland’s 2.78/3.44 ERA/xERA since the beginning of June is one of the best splits in the game over that span.

Earlier this week, we played a couple of first time starters and paid the price for doing so when Luke Weaver was beaten by the Diamondbacks and Chris Flexen (Mets) looked awful in losing to the Padres. Those two losses on the same night alerted us to try not to make that mistake again and also prompted us to look deeper into it.

Like all other crops, rookies go through years of feast and famine; 2016 was a particularly strong sample for pitchers, not because of its stars (Fulmer, Maeda, and Gray top the list) but through its unusual depth. This season is on pace to supply the worst collective freshman pitching numbers in more than a decade, perhaps far longer. More than halfway home, only two starters, Jordan Montgomery and Kyle Freeland, are on pace to accumulate even average major-league starter value. This is the invisible price we pay for the concrete factories that have helped players like Judge, Bellinger and friends to become overnight stars. Without a sample of work to rely on, new pitchers have had little beyond era adjustment and abstraction to base their reputation. They don’t have down years to be explained away, just bad (short) careers. The starting pitching pool is beyond watered down. When guys like Bartolo Colon, Edwin Jackson, Matt Cain and a slew of pitchers with very little experience above Double-A have jobs in the majors, it’s startling to say the least. What we’re seeing now is starters being rushed and prematurely promoted because teams’ are so desperate for starters. Washington’s rookie starter today is another example of a pitcher that doesn’t belong and we’re going to attack that rather than back it. If we lose here, so be it because we’ll get it back with interest at a later date

Once a candidate to go in the top few picks of the 2014 Draft, Erick Fedde underwent Tommy John surgery to repair a torn UCL just days’ before the start of the draft. Owing to his considerable talent and the Nationals’ willingness to gamble on injured higher-end talent in the draft, Fedde still went 18th overall and signed for a little over $2.5 million, about $365,000 over the slot value. Fedde made his pro debut in the summer of 2015 in short-season A-ball, and the Nationals have moved him, giving him at least a half-dozen starts at each level of the minors up to Triple-A. He spent much of this May and June throwing out of the bullpen in preparation for a potential MLB stretch run role there, but was moved back into the Triple-A rotation at the beginning of the month as Washington’s starting pitching depth eroded.

Aside from already being 24 and not having pitched a ton as a pro or truly conquered the high-minors due to the role yo-yo, there’s little to nitpick with Fedde that you can’t nitpick with any prospect. He sits in the low-to-mid-90s with heavy life on the fastball, topping out as high as 97. His slider can get a little slurvy, but at its best it’s a two-plane breaker with tricky late movement. As with nearly every pitching prospect, the third pitch—here it’s the change—could use some further development. Fedde also implemented a curveball separate from his slider this season, and it plays as a fringe-average offering immediately.

The risk factors here are obvious: 2016 represented Fedde’s first full pro season and the Nationals have already toyed with the idea of a relief conversion. Essentially, he’s a two-pitch pitcher and two-pitch pitchers inevitably end up in the pen. Most of your typical durability and pitch selection concerns do apply here too. Fedde was headed for a placement somewhere on the back of the midseason top 50 before Washington moved him to the pen, where he didn’t particularly stand out even if the makings of a pretty good fastball/slider late-innings guy are there. Given his advanced age, it raised just enough uncertainty about the future profile that he fell off the list.

There isn’t a ton to see here with Fedde, at least insofar as his debut is widely expected to be a one-and-done affair for the time being. The Nationals have jerked him around a bit between the rotation and bullpen in the high minors, and he’s only four starts into a return to the former role. He threw 71 pitches in his most recent outing, which caps his potential to work deep into this one. Fedde is not major-league ready. In fact, he’s not even close.

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