Erick Fedde continues to build confidence with strong outing vs Reds in Nationals’ 7-6 win...

Erick Fedde bounced back from a rough 3 ¹⁄₃-inning outing against the Atlanta Braves, (in which he gave up nine hits, four walks, and nine earned runs), with six scoreless in Oracle Park against San Francisco, holding the Giants to six hits in a 4-0 win.

Nationals’ skipper Davey Martinez said he was impressed with the way Washington’s 26-year-old starter bounced back from his worst outing of the season.

“He came in and he was focused today,” Martinez told reporters. “He had good stuff today, so I told him, I said, ‘Hey, let’s build off of that, and in five days, be ready to go again.”

“I needed a bounce back,” Fedde said, as quoted by MASN’s Mark Zuckerman. “Just to mentally be there.”

He ended up getting seven days between starts, as the Nats mixed things up in the rotation for the series with the New York Mets in Citi Field.

Fedde’s second start of the season against the Reds, (after he gave up six hits, three walks, and two runs over four innings in Cincinnati in early June), didn’t begin well, with his first pitch hit out to left on a line for a leadoff homer by Jesse Winker, 1-0.

A walk and single followed in the first, but Joey Votto, who took the free pass, was thrown out one out later when he tried to score on Josh VanMeter’s single to center and a perfect throw from Victor Robles beat him to the plate.

It was 3-1 in the Nationals’ favor when Fedde took the mound in the second, and gave up a second run on an RBI double by José Iglesias, but he held the Reds there through four, and Trea Turner hit a three-run blast in the bottom of the fourth inning to put the home team up 6-2.

Fedde retired the side in order in a 14-pitch fifth which left him at 76 pitches, and he worked around a one-out walk and single in a 26-pitch sixth, which ended his outing...

Erick Fedde’s Line: 6.0 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 4 Ks, 1 HR, 102 P, 61 S, 8/2 GO/FO.

The Nationals’ bullpen gave up four runs, making it closer than it needed to be, but the Nats held on and Fedde earned the win with his work in what ended up a 7-6 game.

What changed for Fedde that allowed him to settle in after the rough start?

“He started using all his pitches and controlled the strike zone, pitching down,” Martinez said.

“When he’s down he’s good. His changeup, splitter, whatever he wants to call it, was really good there too, he started throwing it a little bit more, so but he did a great job.

“He held them down for six innings. The last inning you could tell he — he gets a little bit fidgety when he starts getting tired, but he held it down. We needed that today.”

“Definitely was a tough start,” Fedde told Dan Kolko and Bo Porter on MASN’s post game.

Max Scherzer keeps working toward return to rotation:

Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

LINK: Scherzer on slow path back to the mound, getting closer

“And I knew I needed to make an adjustment. Honestly, probably from the third inning on I started mixing my pitches a lot more early, just started attacking them with that. I knew this team was very aggressive and ambushing, and I felt that they were really on my fastball there, even though I feel like I throw a decent sinker, it was good to get the changeup going and started mixing in a lot of breaking stuff.”

Fedde ended up throwing 29 sinkers, 27 cutters, 19 four-seam fastballs, 18 curves, and nine splitters (or whatever he wants to call it), generating 11 swinging and 14 called strikes total.

His last few outings, and his ability to bounce back, have helped him build confidence, and Fedde said that should help him going forward.

“I found a way to settle myself down and make an adjustment,” he told reporters, as quoted by MASN’s Mark Zuckerman. “That’s big, going on in my career.”