Erick Fedde journeyed to the Korea Baseball Organization with the goal of making it back to the major leagues.

“It was somewhere I felt I could work on all my new pitches and get the ball every fifth (or) sixth day there and throw a ton of innings and prove what I had,” Fedde said during a video conference call Thursday.

He proved it — and then some — by earning KBO MVP honors in 2023.

The right-hander officially agreed to a two-year, $15 million deal with the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday. Reports of a deal first surfaced on Dec. 5.

Fedde, 30, said the opportunity with the Sox means “everything.”

“I had that terrible taste in my mouth about the way my career ended up in the major leagues (in 2022 with the Washington Nationals), and going to Korea, it could be the last taste I ever had of it,” Fedde said. “I really didn’t want that to be how my career ended in the major leagues, and luckily I’m able to pitch well and get a chance again.

“That just gives me that much more fire to make sure I change the way I’m viewed and the narrative around my career and move forward in a positive way.”

The Nationals selected Fedde with the No. 18 pick in the 2014 MLB draft. He spent six seasons with the big-league club, going 21-33 with a 5.41 ERA and 352 strikeouts in 102 games (88 starts) from 2017-22.

He went 6-13 with a 5.81 ERA in 27 starts in 2022.

“That last year, the reality was, unfortunately, that year in spring training I had a little hiccup with health, and I just felt like I was behind the 8-ball from the beginning. I never really felt truly healthy,” Fedde said. “It was tough. My velocity was down, things weren’t sharp.

“It felt like rather than really focusing on being my best, it was just trying to get ready to go out there every five days. And that’s not a fun place to be when it’s a long season.”

Fedde knew things had to change and went to work that offseason. He moved to Arizona and attended the workout facility Push Performance.

“They also had some physical therapists in the facility to get me feeling right and get myself a new repertoire and feeling strong,” Fedde said. “Adding a sweeper, and then just got my changeup figured out and that led me to have a four-pitch mix when I went to Korea and led to a lot of the success.”

His standout numbers included a 20-6 record and a 2.00 ERA in 30 starts for the NC Dinos. He had 209 strikeouts and just 35 walks in 180 1/3 innings.

Fedde allowed only nine home runs and had a 0.95 WHIP.

“You never know how things are going to shake out once real hitters get in the box and you have real at-bats in games,” Fedde said. “So after that first month in Korea when I was having all that success and feeling like I was in command on the mound is when I first realized, ‘I think all the hard work paid off and I’m where I want to be.’”

In addition to the MVP honor, Fedde won the Choi Dong-won Award, which recognizes the KBO’s best pitcher.

“Korea was amazing,” he said. “They treated me really well. The atmosphere is unmatched with the chants and just the way the crowd is. It was a great place for me to go, and I wanted a place where I could throw a ton of innings and work on my things I made adjustments on. Korea really offered that for me.

“I felt like I came in there in the best shape, the best pitching repertoire I ever had, and I had a lot of confidence going in there and I think it led to the success.”

He’ll try to carry that momentum back to the big leagues in Chicago.

“It’s a place I felt I could get into the rotation and help the squad be better and part of the rebuilding of that rotation,” Fedde said.

Sox general manager Chris Getz said a combination of Fedde’s numbers and pitch arsenal stood out.

“It was a tremendous runway for him to make these adjustments,” Getz said during the winter meetings last week in Nashville, Tenn., “and then go to a league where it’s a bit of a major-league environment, from a fans and pressure standpoint. And certainly being a foreigner, it’s never easy. So he’s got a lot of confidence. We see a difference in his stuff.”

Fedde is confident his time in the KBO will translate well to his return to the majors.

“The biggest thing is my last year in D.C., I was not feeling as amazing as I do now,” Fedde said. “I feel strong, I feel healthy. My velocity is back. I feel there’s a sharpness to my pitches that I just didn’t have there at the end of my (Nationals) career.

“I’ve been lucky enough to pitch in the big leagues and I know what it takes to get outs, get swings and misses and be successful. I have a lot of confidence thinking that what I have now is a repertoire that can do that.”

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After their campaigns spent the day sniping at each other online, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley took pains Thursday night to avoid even mentioning the other in back-to-back town halls on CNN.

While the Florida governor took a couple shots at Haley — including accusing her of running “on her donors’ issues” — the former South Carolina governor mentioned DeSantis only to say he, and Donald Trump, are wrong to not support additional funding for Ukraine.

Both candidates are more than 30 points behind Trump in Iowa and are working to have a strong showing there to have the chance at facing off against the former president. Next week, for the first time, DeSantis and Haley will debate each other, again on CNN, without any other rivals onstage.

Here are six takeaways from Thursday’s back-to-back town halls:

DeSantis said Trump wasn’t “pro-life”

DeSantis’ attacks on Trump’s abortion stance and promises for a second term were among the most aggressive of the night. Trump appointed the deciding justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that previously established the right to abortion nationwide, and anti-abortion advocates often called him the most “pro-life president in history” when he was in office.

But DeSantis raised the fact that Trump called Florida’s six-week abortion ban, passed by the GOP-led Legislature and signed into law by the governor, “a terrible thing.” Florida’s six-week ban hasn’t yet gone into effect as another ban is being reviewed by the state Supreme Court. Notably, Iowa has a similar abortion restriction.

At one point DeSantis threw his hands out and said, “Of course not!” when moderator Kaitlan Collins asked him whether he thought Trump was “pro-life.”

“He has flip-flopped on this issue,” DeSantis said. “I don’t know if it’s because of political convenience or this is where he always believed in.”

Iowa mass shooting didn’t dominate the town halls

Both Haley and DeSantis were asked about gun policy in the wake of a mass shooting at a rural Iowa school earlier in the day, in which a sixth grader was killed and five others were hurt. But the topic didn’t dominate the evening.

DeSantis, who has loosened gun laws in Florida and said he doesn’t support federal restrictions on firearms, focused on identifying people who show signs of dangerous behavior or of mental health problems.

“When you send your kids to school, you want to be focused on the academics and the activities,” he said. “The physical safety should not be an issue with our schools. And parents need to have confidence in that.”

The shooting also didn’t alter his pro-gun rights stance. DeSantis stated that background checks should be “instant” and indicated he’d support doing away with a three-day waiting period in Florida.

For her part, Haley also called for increased security at schools and greater focus on mental health, saying “We have got to deal with the cancer that is mental health … What we see is 80 percent of mass shooters are in some sort of crisis at the time that they do that.”

Haley praised Abbott on immigration, but not DeSantis

Haley avoided giving DeSantis any credit on his handling of immigration issues — while heaping praise on Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott — when asked whether she supports the red-state governors busing migrants to blue cities.

After a setup that included both Abbott, who has bused tens of thousands of migrants to cities including Chicago and New York City, and DeSantis, who has flown dozens of migrants to the island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and Sacramento, California, Haley was asked if she supports DeSantis’ ploy.

“Well I’ll talk about Governor Abbott, because I think he was courageous. He was the first one to do it,” Haley said, going on to completely ignore DeSantis’ role in sending migrants from the southern border to so-called sanctuary cities to the north.

“If the president won’t secure and give security to the people of Texas, a governor has a job to protect their citizens,” Haley said, adding later, “I think it’s been hugely effective because all of a sudden the rest of the country is feeling what Texans have been dealing with for so long.”

Haley’s Civil War slip-up is still following her

More than a week after initially declining to say slavery was a cause of the Civil War, Haley is still being pressed to clarify her remarks — by her rivals and by reporters, but less so by voters.

Haley was asked to respond to rival Chris Christie saying she left slavery out of her response to a town-hall questioner in late December because she’s “unwilling to offend anyone by telling the truth.”

“No one’s ever said I have been unwilling to offend. I have offended plenty of people because I call people out when they do something wrong,” Haley began, before turning to the true issue at hand.

“I was thinking past slavery and talking about the lesson that we would learn going forward. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have said slavery,” the former South Carolina governor said. “But in my mind that’s a given that everyone associates the Civil War with slavery.”

While Haley’s omission is giving her rivals oxygen and is driving an extended news cycle that she can’t seem to escape, the gaffe wasn’t top of mind for voters who came to see her on the campaign trail in New Hampshire earlier this week. Some have even dismissed the fallout from Haley’s comment as overblown.

Her cleanup didn’t stop there

Haley also had to answer for her campaign-trail remark on Wednesday that New Hampshire voters will “correct” the outcome of the Iowa caucuses — a comment she claimed was said in jest but that drew swift rebuke from Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (who’s supporting DeSantis) and Christie, who accused Haley on Thursday of “pander[ing]” to her audience.

“You gotta have some fun,” Haley argued. The early states, “we banter against each other on different things. New Hampshire makes fun of Iowa, Iowa makes fun of South Carolina, it’s what we do. I think the problem in politics now is it’s just, like, too serious and too dramatic.”

And she dismissed a question from moderator Erin Burnett about whether her remark signaled a lack of confidence in how she would perform in the caucuses as opposed to New Hampshire, where she’s surged in polls with the backing of that state’s popular governor, Chris Sununu.

DeSantis used a prop to dig at Haley 

In one of the rare instances where DeSantis did engage with Haley, he kicked off his town hall by gifting Collins a basketball jersey to mock the way Haley mixed up Collins’ name with that of Iowa Hawkeyes basketball superstar Caitlin Clark.

“I heard the other day someone say that Kaitlan Collins has some basketball skills,” he said. “Now, I don’t know if that was a mistake or not, but I know in Iowa they have a Caitlin Clark. So, I just want to give you this as a memento.”

The clip of Haley’s mix up went viral over the weekend. The reference showed that DeSantis was acutely aware that, though he was in a nationally televised event, Iowans were his audience.

The Chicago White Sox continued an active week Friday by signing pitcher Chris Flexen to a one-year, $1.75 million deal, a source confirmed to the Tribune.

The right-hander has a career 27-34 record with a 4.95 ERA, two saves and 343 strikeouts in 120 appearances (80 starts) during six seasons with the New York Mets (2017-19), Seattle Mariners (2021-23) and Colorado Rockies (2023). Flexen spent 2020 with the Doosan Bears in the Korea Baseball Organization, with whom he went 8-4 with a 3.01 ERA and 132 strikeouts in 21 starts.

He made a career-best 31 starts in 2021 for the Mariners, going 14-6 with a 3.61 ERA, 125 strikeouts and 40 walks in 179 2/3 innings.

Flexen, 29, went 2-8 with a 6.86 ERA in 29 outings (16 starts) between the Mariners and Rockies in 2023. He was 0-4 with a 7.71 ERA in 17 appearances (four starts) with the Mariners and 2-4 with a 6.27 ERA in 12 starts for the Rockies. The Mariners designated Flexen for assignment on June 27 and traded him to the Mets on July 3. He then was designated for assignment and later released. He signed with the Rockies organization on July 14 and joined their rotation in late July.

USA Today’s Bob Nightengale first reported Friday’s signing.

Earlier this week, the Sox made additions behind the plate and in the bullpen. They signed veteran catcher Martín Maldonado to a one-year deal Tuesday. Two days later they signed reliever Tim Hill to a one-year, $1.8 million deal.

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Already reeling from injuries to several key contributors, the Wild got a couple scares when two of their hottest players left the rink after taking big hits in Thursday’s game against the Tampa Bay Lightning at Xcel Energy Center.

Ryan Hartman, who has four goals in his past six games, left the game after being run into the glass between the benches by Tanner Jeannot just 54 seconds into the game. And in the second period, Marcus Johansson, who has 11 points in his past 12 games, took a puck to the mouth and was checked out by trainers.

Both players returned to finish the game, which stood as the highlight of Minnesota’s night after absorbing a 4-1 loss to the Lightning.

Defenseman Darren Raddysh gave the Lightning a 2-0 lead with his first two goals of the season, and Andrei Vasilevskiy stopped 22 shots as Minnesota lost for the fourth time in four games.

Zach Bogosian, traded from Tampa Bay to Minnesota in November, scored for the Wild, potting a slap shot from the right circle with 4:25 remaining.

Missing its two points leaders in Kirill Kaprizov and Mats Zuccarello, its top defensemen in Jared Spurgeon and Jonas Brodin, and its fiery leader in Marcus Foligno, the Wild struggled to mount any sustained forechecks.

Top forwards Matt Boldy, Marco Rossi and Johansson had none of the Wild’s 23 shots on goal.

On the other end, Marc-Andre Fleury, making his third straight start in the absence of injured Filip Gustavsson, cracked after a pair of long forechecks by Tampa Bay, then had to face a third man advantage early in the third period when Nic Petan was penalized for hooking just 48 seconds in.

Victor Hedman finished that power play with a slap shot from the high slot that just beat a screened Fleury for a 3-0 lead at 2 minutes. Brandon Hagel added an empty net goal after a turnover by Hartman in the Wild zone to make it 4-1.

Fleury, who played his 1,000th NHL game in a 3-2 loss to Winnipeg last Sunday, made 27 saves and remained stuck on 550 career wins, one shy of tying Patrick Roy for second place on the league’s career wins list.

After a tight, scoreless first period, the Lightning claimed momentum early in the second, taking the play to Minnesota’s end and stressing the Wild defense. They broke the seal when Raddysh sent a big rebound back toward the net and it trickled past Fleury for a 1-0 lead at 4:31.

Raddysh doubled the Lightning lead shortly thereafter, finishing a forecheck with a wraparound goal that beat Fleury at 7 minutes.

The Wild believed they cut the Lightning lead in half later in the second period when Brandon Duhaime appeared to shove a loose puck through a scrum and into Tampa Bay’s net, but it was immediately waved off — much to the consternation of Pat Maroon, who argued with the official until being told to go back the Wild bench.