Tommy Edman has never hit more than 13 home runs in any of his six previous MLB seasons.
After just 15 games this year, he’s almost halfway there.
With an easy swing on a knee-high changeup in the sixth inning Friday night, Edman ended what had been a pitcher’s duel between Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Chicago Cubs left-hander Matthew Boyd. He turned a blank scoreline into a three-run Dodgers lead. And, in perhaps the most unexpected twist of the team’s blistering start to this season, Edman joined a five-way tie for the majors’ early lead in home runs, belting his sixth to lift the Dodgers to a 3-0 win at Dodger Stadium.
Home runs, of course, are not why the Dodgers long coveted Edman early in his career with the St. Louis Cardinals. Power is not one of the primary traits they thought they were acquiring when the 29-year-old arrived in a three-way trade at the deadline last summer.
His positional versatility, switch-hitting abilities, and Gold Glove-caliber defense across the diamond are what club executives treasured most. Plays like the one he made in the top of the sixth inning Friday, when he sprinted some 50 feet from a shifted position behind second base to reach a ground ball in the hole and make a spinning throw from the shallow outfield grass to first, are what they envisioned.
But moments later, on a night the Dodgers had struggled to apply any pressure to Boyd, Edman flipped the script.
After Teoscar Hernández singled, and Freddie Freeman (who was returning from the injured list after what he described as a hugely beneficial 10-day rest for his ailing right ankle) was hit by a pitch, Edman jumped on a 1-and-0 changeup and brought a crowd of 53,933 to its feet.
Suddenly, MLB’s early-season home run leaderboard reads like this…
T-1st: Mike Trout (who is closing in on 400 career home runs)
T-1st: Aaron Judge (the three-time American League home run king)
T-1st: Kyle Schwarber (the 2022 National League home run king)
T-1st: Tyler Soderstrom (a power-hitting Athletics prospect)
And, T-1st: Edman (who hit a grand total of four home runs in his entire college career)
The Dodgers (11-4) were also backed up by superb pitching in their first shutout of the season, one keyed by a nearly flawless six-inning effort from Yamamoto.
The right-hander was perfect through his first three innings. He stranded a runner at third in the fourth, after giving up his only two hits of the game. He racked up nine strikeouts with a lethal combination of splitters, curveballs and precisely located mid-90s mph fastballs.
Yamamoto’s lone walk of the outing came to his penultimate batter, missing with a full-count curveball to Ian Happ with two outs in the top of the sixth. But in another full-count to star Cubs slugger Kyle Tucker in the next at-bat, Yamamoto snapped off a swing-and-miss cutter, getting a standing ovation from the Chavez Ravine crowd, and a long hug from manager Dave Roberts back in the dugout, after lowering his ERA to 1.23 through four starts this season (fourth-best in the NL so far).
Boyd, a veteran left-hander who entered the night without a run allowed in his first two starts of the year for the Cubs (9-7), wasn’t so lucky in the bottom half of the inning.
Hernández battled back from an 0-and-2 count to poke a full-count changeup to center for a single.
Freeman — who said before the game that the right ankle he had surgically repaired this offseason, then re-aggravated earlier this month by slipping in the shower, was “the best [it has] felt” since he originally sprained it late last season — then took a wide sinker off the side of his hip.
That brought up Edman, the undersized 5-foot-9 utilityman who began showing signs of a power surge last season by hitting six home runs in 37 games following his trade to the Dodgers; earning the nickname “Tommy Tanks.”
In less than half that time this year, he’s already matched that total, sending Friday’s blast halfway up the left-field pavilion.
And now, a player who had never before topped 13 long balls in a season is on pace for more than 60.
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