It’s okay to be happy for Tommy Edman without thinking the Cardinals got ripped off.
Tommy Edman’s exploits with the Dodgers have been fun to watch. He has put up a 123 wRC+ in the playoffs and turned things up a notch in the NLCS, winning the NLCS MVP after batting .407 and hitting clean up for a loaded Dodgers lineup.
But Edman’s success has come with plenty of angst from St. Louis Cardinals fans after the Dogers acquired him from the Cardinals at the trade deadline. And that’s why I want to write about Tommy Edman today, and, more specifically, to defend the Tommy Edman trade.
Just because a player is having success on their new team doesn’t mean the trade was a bad one. That kind of “analysis” is overly simplistic and that’s the kind of “analysis” we’re seeing this postseason.
So today I want to step back and take a wider and properly contextualized look at the trade that sent Tommy Edman from the Dodgers with the goal of vindicating it from recency bias.
The Context
Context is king. Tommy Edman is hitting good so the Tommy Edman trade was bad for the Cardinals is just bad analysis. The conclusion might be correct, and I’m willing to debate that, but it doesn’t follow from the premises.
Let’s look back to the time of the trade.
On July 29th, the Cardinals sent Tommy Edman to the Dodgers as part of a 3-team deal and received Erick Fedde and Tommy Pham in return.
We know how the season ended up for the Cardinals but that’s not a factor here. At the time, the Cardinals were 54-52 and only 2.5 games out of the final wild card spot. You can make the argument that the Cardinals should have sold at the deadline because they weren’t likely to be World Series contenders but personally, I have a hard time blaming them for trying to fill gaps in the roster and push for the playoffs.
The fact that they managed to do that without trading any prospects or any players that were likely to be a long-term part of the roster is a particularly good selling point.
And then there’s the fact that the Cardinals were able to get two players with profiles that fit exactly what they needed. The rotation ranked 23rd in ERA and 16th in FIP at the time and was an obvious weak point. Acquiring Fedde, who was pitching at a 4 fWAR pace at the time, filled that need and then gave the Cardinals a starter who they could plug into the 2025 rotation at a low cost. So Fedde was not only a win for 2024 but also a win for 2025.
Another obvious weakness of the roster was a lack of outfield production, and especially against left-handed pitching.
At the time of the trade, the Cardinals outfield ranked 20th in fWAR, 18th in wRC+ overall, and 22nd in wRC+ against lefties. There’s ample room for improvement there and the Cardinals were able to bring in a right-handed hitting outfielder to fill that need.
Just to reiterate an earlier point too – they were able to acquire both a good, cheap, controllable starter and a right-handed hitting outfield bench bat for the price of a player who hadn’t played all season, wouldn’t end up debuting for another 20 days, and wasn’t controllable beyond 2025.
At the time of this trade, it was certainly fair to argue if the Cardinals should be going for it or selling but in terms of value and filling gaps, it’s hard to argue against the deal itself.
Post-Trade Results
When we take a look at the team results after the deal, this trade doesn’t look so rosy. The Dodgers, of course, made the playoffs and the Cardinals didn’t. This was always a possibility, though, and perhaps even the likeliest one considering the Dodgers sat in first place at the time of the deal and the Cardinals were outside the playoff picture.
The Dodgers were always acquiring Edman for the playoffs this year and for the 2025 season whereas the Cardinals were acquiring Fedde and Pham in an effort to get into the playoffs with the added bonus of keeping Fedde for 2025.
The attempted playoff run for the Cardinals was obviously short lived so, in hindsight, this deal doesn’t look as good as it would have if the Cardinals made the playoffs.
But then we get to the players and now that we’ve contextualized the deal and mentioned what happened to each team after the trade, we can really dig into the central part of this analysis.
What happened with each player after they were traded? Well, Fedde slowed down, which should have been expected given his peripherals at the time of the trade, but still finished with a more than serviceable 3.72 ERA and 4.05 FIP. In the 10 starts he made with the Cardinals, he earned 0.8 fWAR which put him on a little more than a 2.5 fWAR pace per 32 starts. That’s not a star caliber player by any stretch of the imagination but it’s certainly a rock solid back end starter who had pitched like a mid-rotation starter or better when he was with the White Sox (4 fWAR pace in Chicago).
Edman put up 0.9 fWAR with the Dodgers with his typical below average batting line (98 wRC+) and solid defense up the middle.
So in terms of post-trade regular season production, those two players were basically a wash. Tommy Pham was worth -0.2 fWAR so if you sum it all up, the Cardinals finished with slightly less on field production though they received that production in a position of weakness (though one could also make the argument that Edman in center field would have also filled a weakness).
By the time Edman played in his first game, the Cardinals were 5 games back from the final wild card spot. That’s 2.5 games lower in the standings than they were at the time of the trade. Was Edman really likely to boost the team into the playoffs? Probably not.
So what we’ve determined here is that in the short term, the trade really made no difference. That Cardinals got roughly equivalent on-field production as the Dodgers and they were likely to miss the playoffs either way. So, in the short term this really isn’t a negative for the Cardinals.
You could look at Edman’s playoff campaign to make the argument that the Cardinals should have kept him but that’s simply not sound logic. For starters, we just determined that the Cardinals were unliklely to make the playoffs with Edman so Edman wouldn’t have even had the chance to go on a playoff run had he stayed in St. Louis.
But even if we look at his playoff numbers, we shouldn’t let 11 games determine how we view a player. Edman has gotten hot and played amazing baseball in the biggest moments of the season and it’s been fun to watch. It’s worth celebrating! But these 11 games don’t outweigh Edman’s body of work over the course of the season and his career. They are just 11 games. They shouldn’t change anyone’s opinion of this trade.
Long Term Impacts
Since we’ve looked at the immediate context of the trade, and the short term results of it, we no need to examine the longer term impacts. And that’s really where my argument rests its case. To this point I’ve stated that taken in proper context, it’s hard to consider the trade a bad deal at the time it was made, even if you do want to argue that the Cardinals chose the wrong path with buying instead of selling.
I’ve also argued that the short term results of the trade are net neutral for the Cardinals. But it’s the long-term effects of this trade that matter now since both Fedde and Edman are controllable for the 2025 season by their new teams.
Let’s examine Tommy Edman first. What would his place be on the Cardinals 2025 roster? Probably center field. It certainly wouldn’t be shortstop or second base. So if we consider Tommy Edman as a center fielder, what do we see?
I’ll start by pointing out that Edman was a neutral center field defender in his limited 2024 action. He posted exactly 0 DRS and 0 OAA in 188 innings in center. I’ll also mention that the year before he posted 2 DRS and 5 OAA at the same position in 310 innings. So, while he has shown an ability to play center field in the past, that has also been in a small sample size, and the smaller and more recent sample size isn’t as rosy.
That’s not to say that Edman can’t be a good center fielder but he’s not likely to be a Michael Siani level center fielder. Now, obviously he can hit better than Siani and he probably would be an upgrade on Siani next year. I’m not doubting that. But he’s a slightly below average hitter who would probably play above average to good center field defense.
That’s a good player and probably an upgrade over what the Cardinals will have in center field to begin the 2025 season.
Now we get to Fedde. As I mentioned earlier, Fedde pitched at a 2.5 fWAR pace after being traded to the Cardinals. That’s probably more realistic than his 4 fWAR pace with the White Sox. So for the sake of ease, let’s say he’s roughly a 2.5 fWAR pitcher making $7.5 million next year.
To put that in perspective, Kyle Gibson put up 1.5 fWAR in 30 starts and Lance Lynn put up 1.3 fWAR in 23 starts. That’s a 1.6 fWAR pace for Gibson and a 1.8 fWAR pace for Lynn. Factor in the pair being an extra year older next year and Fedde can be projected as roughly a one win improvement on Lynn/Gibson while saving the Cardinals $3.5 million when compared to Lynn’s contract and $4.5 million when compared to Gibson’s.
That’s an upgrade too.
So what’s my point? My point is that Fedde and Edman both represent upgrades when compared to the current options for the Cardinals but the Cardinals have chosen to go with the pitching upgrade at cost over the center field upgrade at cost.
That’s a fine decision. It also doesn’t matter very much because the Cardinals probably won’t be a playoff team next year as they shift their focus to player development.
And the Cardinals will certainly need innings in the rotation as the 2025 rotation currently contains Steven Matz, Andre Pallante, and Michael McGreevy, none of whom are reliable rotation options at this point in their careers (though you know how much I believe in Andre Pallante).
In center field, the Cardinals can continue to roll out Michael Siani and Victor Scott who are both worse than Edman but are also young and trying to prove they can be a part of the Cardinals future.
So really for next year, the Edman trade meant the Cardinals prioritized rotation stability over center field stability and it probably won’t even matter because the 2025 Cardinals aren’t likely to be a playoff team.
Final Thoughts
So basically my point so far has been that the trade made sense at the time, didn’t really change much in the short term, and probably won’t change much next year.
And then if we look even further ahead, Edman will be a free agent after the 2025 season and any contract extension would begin with his age 31 season. That’s not something the Cardinals were likely to commit to as they enter a reset.
Edman certainly may be the more valuable player than Fedde in 2024 and if that happens then this trade is really only a mild disappointment from a Cardinals perspective but still doesn’t change much for the 2024 team, the 2025 team, or the future of the organization.
Even with that being my tentative conclusion at this point, it’s also worth pointing out that it’s too soon to judge since both Edman and Fedde have another year to play on their contracts.
So despite Edman’s playoff heroics, I have a hard time looking at this trade like it was a bad thing for the Cardinals. It might end up being a mildly bad trade but really it’s likely to be more of a neutral trade that didn’t really have much of an impact on the Cardinals.
That means its worth enjoying what Edman is doing this October with a clear mind instead of bashing the Cardinals for trading yet another player having a good postseason campaign. The Cardinals have had their fair share of bad trades but this isn’t one of them. At least not yet.
Thanks for reading.