St. Louis Cardinals: Tommy Edman-stud or Aledmys Diaz 2.0?

Tommy Edman was a breakout performer in 2019 for the St. Louis Cardinals but moving forward, will he be able to keep up the same performance level?

This is not a debate about 2019, it is a debate about the future. Tommy Edman was a complete stud for the St. Louis Cardinals in 2019. End of story.

Not getting into the Majors until the first week of June, Edman went from no-name rookie to must-start contributor by the end of the season into the postseason. In just 326 at-bats (about half a season’s worth), Edman batted .304 with a .850 OPS, 11 homers, seven triples, and 15 steals. Double that over an entire season’s at-bats, and that is a complete stud.

Add on to it that Edman is a switch hitter who played above-average defense third base, second base, and right field and the Cardinals look like they have a perennial All-Star on their hands. The big question is whether or not 2019 was a mirage or not. While I hope it wasn’t, there are reasons for concern. This season looks a lot like the first season that ex-Cardinal Aledmys Diaz had.

That season had Diaz come up earlier and play more, but he hit over .300 with a little more power, but a .879 OPS as a similar line-drive hitter who went to the All-Star game. That was 2016, in 2017, his .879 OPS plummeted to .682 and he looked like a shell of the player he was the year before. After the 2017 season, he was traded to Toronto and was a bench player for the Astros in 2019. This the cautionary tale to watch for.

Diaz was great until pitchers got a book on him and figured out how to get him out. After his first-year success, he couldn’t make the necessary adjustments to stay productive in the league.

Edman and Diaz are different players, but their similar first seasons are noteworthy.

The biggest concern with Edman is that he wasn’t the type of hitter he was in the MLB as he was all of his minor league career. Over his four minor league seasons, Edman never had an OPS above .800 other than the 49 games he played at AAA before he was called up.

He’s been a good batting average hitter and base steeler, but Edman hasn’t hit for the type of power he showed at the MLB. This could very well be because of the difference in balls being used, but either way, his MLB power numbers look like an outlier.

Players do make strides and change as hitters, so he could have just taken a step forward in his development, but it’s still something to watch.

The other thing to watch is that Edman’s BABIP in 2019 was .346. This isn’t super inflated, but it is a little bit high. Now, that high BABIP can be discounted because all he did this year was hit the ball hard. With a soft contact percentage of just 15.5%, he very rarely hit the ball softly. Doing that will buy you some luck.

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Via baseballsavant.com, Edman’s expected numbers were a .287 batting average and .441 slugging percentage. Comparing that to the .304 and .500 true batting average and slug, and it confirms that Edman was overplaying his batting profile at least a little bit. Now, neither of those expected numbers would be anything to get mad at though.

There is a discrepancy between FanGraphs.com and baseballsavant.com because FanGraphs has Edman’s hard-hit percentage at 41.1% while baseballsavant says it was only 32.8%. By baseballsavant (the Statcast website that I definitely trust more) that would put Edman’s exit velo below league average. Either way, Edman’s elite sprint speed, and contact ability caused the slugging power he had in 2019.

In conclusion of this analysis, it’s clear that Edman got just a little lucky in 2019 and will probably take a small step back (at least in power numbers) in 2020, but there’s nothing to suggest he will take a Diaz-sized dip in production.

Edman doesn’t technically have a position right now, but after his stellar 2019, he will get plenty of playing time all over the diamond in 2020. The wonderful thing about speed is that it never slumps. Even if Edman’s pop drops off, he will still turn singles into extra-base hits. With a full season of starts, I would also not be surprised to see him steal 30 bases too.

No, I don’t think that Edman will fall off a cliff, but I wouldn’t expect another .850 OPS year. You can only run from expected numbers for so long before they catch up to you. Even if Edman sits at closer to a .800 OPS, that is still a valuable major leaguer that the Cardinals are lucky to have.