Washington Nationals’ Erick Fedde leaves start with apparent injury... no details yet

WASHINGTON, D.C.: Erick Fedde was just 25 pitches into his outing this morning against the Boston Red Sox, but after giving up a leadoff single on a 1-2 splitter down in the zone to the Sox’ third baseman Rafael Devers, the 25-year-old Nationals’ right-hander called the team’s trainer and pitching coach out to the mound for a long discussion that ended with Washington’s 2014 1st Round pick leaving today’s game.

There was nothing obvious that we can point to as the cause of concern or an apparent injury.

Fedde was coming off a 115-pitch outing in Philadelphia last weekend in which he’d earned his first win in spite of the fact that he’d surrendered five runs in five innings on the mound against the Philadelphia Phillies in Citizens Bank Park.

Nationals’ manager Davey Martinez said after the game that Fedde needed to get ahead in the count and start with strike one as he continues to improve on what he’d done since he came up from Triple-A to join the Nationals’ rotation.

“He’s got to start working ahead in the counts a little bit more,” Martinez explained, “... and throwing strike one. But he’s young and he’s got an unbelievable arm and he is going to be really good.”

There was no hint of any issues before today’s game, with Martinez talking about what the righty needed to do going forward.

“For me, we keep it simple with him,” Martinez said, when asked what else he and his staff had the right-hander focusing on, “... just throw strikes.”

“Limit the damage, try not to walk people, be smart, make good pitches. I like Fedde a lot, he’s a competitor, and he gives you everything he’s got, and I told him, I said, ‘Hey, for you it’s about your pitch count,’ and if he can give us six innings, 95 pitches, that’s awesome, so he understands it.

“He did something in his bullpen, worked on some stuff with [Nats’ pitching coach Derek Lilliquist], so he feels pretty good going into today.”

The good feelings didn’t last long.

Per the Nationals’ team policy they rarely release any information during the games, so we’ll likely have to wait until Martinez’s post game talk with reporters to get any info...

Fedde’s 2017 campaign did end prematurely when he suffered a strained flexor mass, and he did have a noticeable drop in velocity at that point, and his velo did appear to be down some this afternoon...

We’ll add actual information when we have some...