- Share via
Tommy Edman never hit more than 13 home runs in any of his six previous seasons.
After 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 pitchers duel between Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Chicago Cubs left-hander Matthew Boyd. Edman turned a blank scoreline into a three-run Dodgers lead. And, in perhaps the most unexpected twist of the team’s blistering start, Edman joined a five-way tie for the major league lead in home runs, belting his sixth to lift the Dodgers to a 3-0 win at Dodger Stadium.
“He’s got a really good routine to keep his body strong. He does a good job of controlling the strike zone and finding pitches he can drive. And he’s taking good swings,” said manager Dave Roberts, who described himself as both “surprised” and “impressed” by Edman’s power display.
“I don’t think he’d ever say he’s a power hitter,” Roberts added. “But he’s finding a way to backspin the baseball and hit some homers.”
The root of the frustrations for Andy Pages has been at the plate — where, even after collecting two home runs in his last three games, he is batting just .171 with a .648 OPS.
Home runs 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 on Boyd, Edman flipped the script with one timely swing.
After Teoscar Hernández singled and Freddie Freeman was hit by a pitch — the latter returning from the injured list after what he described as a hugely beneficial 10-day rest for his ailing right ankle — Edman jumped on a 1-and-0 changeup for a 423-foot blast halfway up the left-field pavilion.
“I’m really not trying to hit homers,” the 5-foot-9, 193-pound Edman said with a laugh. “More a side result of putting in some good work in the cage and having a better plan at the plate, doing my preparation and knowing how I’m trying to attack a pitcher.”
Suddenly, MLB’s home run leaderboard reads as follows:
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 four home runs in his college career)
“It’s a lot of guys who kind of look the same,” Edman joked. “And then there’s me.”
The Dodgers (11-4) also were 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 gave up his only two hits in the fourth but managed to strand a runner at third. And he racked up nine strikeouts with a lethal combination of splitters, curveballs and precisely located mid-90s fastballs.
“He was just dotting tonight,” said Freeman, who aided Yamamoto’s cause on a relay play that caught Chicago’s Seiya Suzuki in a rundown during the fourth inning. “Down and away. The splitter was down. Two-seamer running in on the righties’ hands. He just had everything going tonight. He’s looked like that since spring training. Looks like he’s on a mission this year.”
Yamamoto’s lone walk came to his penultimate batter, missing with a full-count curveball to Ian Happ with two outs in 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 crowd and a long hug from Roberts in the dugout after lowering his earned-run average to 1.23 through four starts (fourth best in the NL).
“Each time out you see his confidence growing,” said Roberts, who removed Yamamoto only because his pitch count climbed to 103 (the second-highest of his MLB career).
“He holds his adrenaline. He makes pitches when he needs to. Right now, he’s in a place where he’s really unflappable.”
Boyd, a veteran left-hander who entered the night having not given up a run in two starts for the Cubs (9-7), wasn’t so lucky in the sixth.
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 ankle he had surgically repaired this offseason, then reaggravated this month by slipping in the shower, was “the best [it has] felt” since he sprained it late last season — then took a wide sinker off the side of his hip.
That brought up Edman, the undersized utility man who began showing signs of power last season by hitting six home runs in 37 games following his trade, earning the nickname “Tommy Tanks.”
In less than half that time this season he’s matched that total. And now, a player who never topped 13 long balls in a season is on pace for more than 60.
“I got the under on the 60,” Roberts joked. “But he just takes good at-bats. ... He just has the knack for getting the big hit.”
Are you a true-blue fan?
Get our Dodgers Dugout newsletter for insights, news and much more.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
