CHICAGO – Following a 2022 season in which he went a forgettable 6-13 with a 5.81 ERA over 27 starts, Erick Fedde was not only not tendered a contract by the Nationals, but no other teams were willing to give him a full MLB deal for the season ahead.

Instead of feeling like he was at some sort of career crossroads, Fedde viewed at as a dead end if he didn’t take drastic measures. Pouting and being stubborn about his struggles, he said, were not options because he was likely done with the game if he didn’t undergo a full makeover with his arsenal.

Ultimately, Fedde picked up stakes, moved to Arizona and worked daily at a pitching mechanics facility where he got some help on a career-altering pitch from former Cardinals phenom Shelby Miller. He had to go half-way around the world to perfect the sweeper pitch that Miller introduced him to, but it helped reestablish a career that he briefly thought might be finished.

“Sometimes you have a wakeup call and it’s an important time to decide whether you are going to crumble or do something about it,” said Fedde, who won the Korean Baseball Organization’s version of the Cy Young after winning that league’s pitching Triple Crown with 20 wins, 209 strikeouts and a 2.00 ERA. “I had to look myself in the mirror and make some big changes. I moved to Arizona, worked on some things, went to Korea and took a chance and now I’m happy to say things have worked out well.”

Fedde, 31, was so good in Korea that he was on the Cardinals' radar over the winter, but they ultimately opted for Sonny Gray, Kyle Gibson and Lance Lynn. When those three veterans started to struggle of late, president of baseball operations John Mozeliak was proactive in aggressively pursuing Fedde, who came back to MLB this season and has been one of the league’s most consistent pitchers. Fedde said he got over the jarring feeling of his first MLB trade pretty quickly considering that he was going from the White Sox potentially historic futility to a pennant race with the Cardinals, who he will debut for on Friday at Wrigley Field.

Despite the White Sox struggles, Fedde went 7-4 with a 3.11 ERA -- a dramatic improvement over the numbers he left MLB with in 2022. In 121 2/3 innings, Fedde has limited the opposition to a .227 average while striking out 108 hitters and walking 34.

The X-factor for his dramatic turnaround, of course, has been a devastating sweeper -- a pitch that profiles initially as a fastball before it breaks dramatically away from a righty or into a lefty. He’s thrown 400 sweepers -- 360 to righties and 40 to lefties -- and just 15 of those pitches have resulted in hits, per Baseball Savant. Foes have hit a paltry .167 on at-bats that have ended on sweepers.

The sweeper has also had a trickle-down effect on his other pitches, but it has specifically helped his fastball the most (top 7 percent in MLB in fastball run value, per Savant). The average exit velocity on balls hit off Fedde is just 88.1 mph, which ranks in baseball’s top 31 percent. Also, his low walk rate (6.8 percent) and low hard-hit rate (36 percent) rank in the top third of MLB.

“I got to the point where I realized I didn’t have that swing-and-miss pitch that put me in a lot of tough situations,” he said. “It gave me something that I could use to put hitters away. It’s something that has changed my game and it’s something I can lean on at all times.”

Maybe it was only fitting, Fedde said, that it was Miller -- a Cardinal first-round Draft pick in 2009 who went 26-18 with a 3.33 ERA from 2012-14 with St. Louis -- who taught him the basics of the sweeper. That pitch changed the course of his career. Now, he hopes to change the course of the 2024 season for the Cardinals, who still have designs on winning the NL Central.

“At that time, he was coming from the Yankees where a lot of those guys threw that pitch and he showed me a few grips that I worked on,” he said. “The White Sox gave me the chance to get back and prove myself, and then I was lucky enough to be traded. Now, I want to put it all together in some big important games and help the Cardinals get in the playoffs.”