Tommy Two Hits: Edman Has Come Up Big for the Dodgers

Superstars on nine-figure contracts have played a major role in the Dodgers both reaching the World Series and taking a two-games-to-none lead over the Yankees, but Los Angeles wouldn’t be in this position without the work of Tommy Edman. Acquired from the Cardinals on July 29, the 29-year-old switch-hitter joined the playing time mix at both shortstop and center field — the latter of which has been the Dodgers’ weakest position this season — and after making solid contributions down the stretch, he’s stepped up in impressive fashion in October. He earned NLCS MVP honors against the Mets and has continued his hot hitting through the first two games of the World Series while showing off his defensive versatility. At this writing, he’s riding a streak of five straight two-hit games, four of which have included an extra-base hit.

Edman moved from the Cardinals to the Dodgers in the same three-way, eight-player blockbuster that brought reliever Michael Kopech to Los Angeles from the White Sox. At the time he was dealt, Edman had yet to appear in a major league game this season. Lingering complications from offseason surgery on his right wrist kept him sidelined through the first half, with a sprained right ankle in late June setting back his planned rehab assignment a couple of extra weeks.

Between the necessity of further rehab and the reacquisition of Amed Rosario on the same day of the three-way trade, it wasn’t initially clear what the Dodgers had in store for Edman, but both shortstop and center field represented areas of need. The Dodgers began the season with Mookie Betts at shortstop (after a mid-spring swap with Gavin Lux), then turned to Miguel Rojas when Betts suffered a fracture in his left hand on June 15. In center, the Dodgers left the gate with 2023 surprise James Outman as the starter, but he struggled to replicate his rookie showing, earning a return ticket to Triple-A Oklahoma City. He was replaced by rookie Andy Pages, whose high-profile defensive gaffes in the middle pasture led to a deadline day trade for light-hitting glove whiz Kevin Kiermaier.

Before joining the Dodgers, Edman completed his rehab assignment at Oklahoma City, then debuted on August 19, with Pages initially optioned to make room on the roster (by that point, Rosario had already been designated for assignment). Despite his platoon issues — more on which below — Edman was in the lineup for all but two of the Dodgers’ final 37 games, and came off the bench for those. He split his time between center field (24 games, 22 starts) and shortstop (18 games, 13 starts), sometimes serving as a moving part in-game; he also made a two-inning cameo at second base, which just happens to be the position where he won a Gold Glove in 2021.

With Rojas battling hamstring, groin, and adductor injuries late in the season, Edman started six of the Dodgers’ final 11 games at that spot, but center field has generally been the Dodgers’ bigger problem. Even with Pages hitting well in limited duty upon returning when rosters expanded in September, both the 83 wRC+ and 0.9 WAR the team received at the spot (including Edman’s contributions) represented their lowest marks at any position. Dragged down by a season-ending 2-for-30 slump, Edman’s own offensive numbers were rather modest: .237/.294/.417 (98 wRC+) with six homers and six steals in 153 plate appearances. His small-sample defensive metrics were within one run of average on either side across the board; he finished with 0.9 WAR.

Manager Dave Roberts has called upon Edman’s versatility during the postseason. He started the first three games of the Division Series against the Padres in center field, then moved to shortstop in the third inning of Game 3 after Rojas left due to a torn adductor muscle, and remained at the spot through the entire NLCS against the Mets and Game 1 of the World Series; in Game 2, with Rojas back in the lineup, Edman returned to center.

Prior to Game 4 of the NLCS — his big breakout, which I’ll detail further below — Edman spoke of the importance of the Dodgers’ first-round bye. “I think what was nice was having that bye… I finished the season really cold and then I had, like, five or six days to do some really good work on the swing,” he said. “And definitely felt better once the postseason started.”

As I noted when the Dodgers acquired him, Edman has shown a substantial platoon split over the course of his career, hitting much better against lefties than righties — so much so that last season, he even took 61 PA against righties from the right-hand side (he did so four times in 2021 as well), hitting the ball harder but getting less bang for his buck, results-wise. For the Dodgers, his ability to play center and shortstop has trumped his offensive issues, but even within the small samples of his regular season performance, his platoon split only grew wider, and somehow it’s become even more drastic in October:

Edman has hit the ball harder against lefties than righties in each of his six major league seasons, with higher exit velocities, barrel rates, and hard-hit rates across the board. That’s especially been the case this year, as his quality of contact against righties has been pretty meager, both in the regular season and the postseason. Note that while the default on Baseball Savant is to remove bunts from the averages, I’ve included them above for this postseason, as Edman’s three, all against righties, take up a substantial portion of his opportunities (he did not bunt during the regular season). Collectively those three bunts drag his average exit velo in that split down from 87.2 mph to 82.5, and his hard-hit rate from 25.8% to 23.5%, but they improve his slash stats, as one of them was a base hit.

Edman has also taken three PA against righties from the right side during this postseason. He had a pair of groundouts against Jeremiah Estrada in the NLDS, the first of which was a double play ball that actually plated the Dodgers’ final run in a 7-5 win in Game 1. He also grounded out against Tommy Kahnle in Game 1 of the World Series. “It’s kind of just the matchups based on the guy’s pitch profile, see which pitches are easier to get to from the right side versus the left side,” Edman said the day after doing so for the first time against Estrada. “Usually that’s reflected in the splits. I think that guy had pretty even splits righty versus lefty.”

As you can see from the table above, Edman has not only raked against lefties, he’s consistently overperformed even relative to a much higher quality of contact than against righties. His slugging percentage was 53 points higher than his xSLG during his Cardinals tenure, but that increased to 233 points during this regular season, and it’s up by a honkin’ 525 points during this postseason.

Matchup-wise, Edman’s platoon splits have worked out particularly well for the Dodgers, with his share of plate appearances against southpaws rising from 23.5% during the regular season to 32.7% in the postseason. The Padres didn’t start any lefties against the Dodgers in the Division Series, during which Edman hit .235/.235/.235. He did go 2-for-2 singles off lefty relievers Tanner Scott (Game 2) and Yuki Matsui (Game 4), though neither was of consequence. His most important hit of the series was the aforementioned bunt single, off righty Dylan Cease in the fourth inning of Game 1. It sparked a three-run rally that gave the Dodgers a lead they never relinquished.

The Mets, by contrast, started lefties in NLCS Games 2 (Sean Manaea), 4 (Jose Quintana), 5 (David Peterson) and 6 (Manaea again), and the Dodgers pounded them for 15 runs (14 earned) in 14 innings. Edman was right in the thick of it, but he didn’t even have to wait that long to start producing against southpaws. In Game 1, he hit a fourth-inning RBI single off Peterson, the third Mets pitcher after Kodai Senga and Reed Garrett; that was part of a three-run rally. In Game 2, he went 3-for-4 with a single off Manaea and two more off righty relievers Phil Maton (driving in two of the three runners on) and Ryne Stanek (he took second on a walk, stole third and was stranded). His lone hit in Game 3 was a single off Garrett; he then scored on Enrique Hernández’s homer.

Up through NLCS Game 3, all nine of Edman’s postseason hits had been singles, and two of the five runs he’d driven in had been via outs, not counting the GIDP run; he had a sacrifice bunt in NLDS Game 4, and a sac fly in NLCS Game 3. Again from his pre-NLCS Game 4 media session, he spoke about fine-tuning his swings:

“I’m kind of working on similar things from both sides. But my righty swing felt pretty good end of the year; lefty swing didn’t feel very good. Now my lefty swing is feeling good again…

“I have different cues, just because my top hand is dominant on the right side and [my] bottom hand dominant on left side. You can’t do exactly the same thing. For me it’s kind of just more about using like the backside of my swing a little better, with the left hand and left back hip.

“And I think I do a better job of that naturally right-handed. So it’s kind of just trying to get the swings a little bit closer to each other so they’re a little bit easier to manage.”

Moved up to the cleanup spot with Freddie Freeman out of the lineup, Edman started showing more pop in that game, doubling off Quintana to drive in Shohei Ohtani for the go-ahead run (and sending Betts to third) in the second inning, then hitting a two-run double off lefty Danny Young in the eighth, padding the lead to 9-2. After singles against Peterson and righty closer Edwin Díaz went for naught out of the fifth spot in the lineup in Game 5, he moved back to cleanup and, well, cleaned up. He drove in the Dodgers’ first four runs of Game 6, clubbing a two-run double off Manaea in the first inning to erase a 1-0 Mets lead, then hitting a two-run homer off Manaea in the third. The Dodgers never looked back, and Edman was named the series MVP for his .407/.393/.630 performance, which included 11 hits and 11 RBI, the latter of which tied Corey Seager’s NLCS club record from 2020.

The four-day layoff between the NLCS and the World Series didn’t cool Edman’s bat. In Game 1, he doubled off Gerrit Cole in the sixth inning, his first extra-base hit against a righty in this postseason. While he ended up stranded at third base in that inning, his 10th-inning single off righty Jake Cousins — which second baseman Oswaldo Cabrera dove for but did not entirely stop — made him the potential winning run, and gave the Dodgers two on and one out. That was the point at which Yankees manager Aaron Boone took leave of his senses to throw Nestor Cortes into the fire, and we all know what happened next.

Here it’s worth noting that on the defensive side, Edman has generally made everything look easy at either position in October. He was particularly in the mix for a couple of big plays at shortstop in Game 1; both batters reached base but his diving stops limited the damage. In the sixth inning, the Yankees were up 2-1 after Jazz Chisholm Jr. singled and stole second, and one out later, Anthony Banda intentionally walked Anthony Volpe to bring up Austin Wells. The slumping catcher hit a 102.7-mph chopper on which Edman made a spectacular stop while ranging to his right; Wells reached first with a single, but Edman’s throw home (which was cut off) kept Chisholm from trying to score, and Alex Verdugo’s strikeout stranded him there.

In the 10th, with the score tied 2-2 and one out, Chisholm singled and then stole both second and third base, forcing the Dodgers to draw the infield in. Blake Treinen walked Anthony Rizzo intentionally to bring up Volpe, who hit a 94.6-mph chopper that Edman stopped near second base. His momentary fumble prevented an inning-ending 6-4-3 double play, but he recovered in time to get the forceout, though Chisholm scored the go-ahead run. With Treinen striking out Wells, the Dodgers were able to keep the margin at one run.

Fresh off of that game, Edman tormented lefty Carlos Rodón in Game 2, breaking a scoreless tie with a solo homer to lead off the second inning, and then doubling and stealing third after Teoscar Hernández and Freeman hit back-to-back homers in the third.

That adds up to a .500/.500/1.250 line through two games of the World Series, and a .365/.358/.577 line for the entire postseason. His 157 wRC+ ranks third on the team, trailing only Betts and Max Muncy. If you want to nitpick, yes, it would be nice if he’d draw a walk, something he did only 7.2% of the time during the regular season; his 33.7% chase rate is about 11 percentage points higher than his regular season mark, but expanding the zone did yield the homer off Manaea, and his 12.7% strikeout rate is about seven points below his season mark.

Edman isn’t the only deadline acquisition who has come up big for the Dodgers. Jack Flaherty helped to stabilize a decimated rotation down the stretch and has turned in a pair of stellar starts in the NLCS and World Series openers, offsetting a couple of duds. Kopech, who carried a 4.74 ERA with the White Sox, has been lights out for the Dodgers both in the regular season and the playoffs. With Betts finding his stroke, Muncy wearing down pitchers, Freeman suddenly rejuvenated after resting his injured right ankle, and Ohtani hopefully good to go after leaving Game 2 with a left shoulder scare, the Dodgers’ lineup has plenty of weapons. At this point, however, it would hardly be a surprise if Tommy Two Hits continues to lead the way.