Just now: Versatile Tommy Edman provides the Cardinals with a safety net where other plans may fail

The willingness of the Cardinals to solve all potential lineup problems by plugging Tommy Edman into whatever hole appears at a given time would be a solid running joke if it wasn’t entirely serious. Since making his big league debut in 2019, Edman has made at least 50 starts at four different positions, none of which is center field, where he enters spring training as the team’s incumbent. Versatility is a skill, and the saying goes that one of a ballplayer’s most important abilities is availability.

For Edman, that expands to flexibility. In only one season, 2021, has he spent a clear majority of his time at a single position, and in that season, he won the NL Gold Glove at second base while still making 35 starts in right field. Slowed at times by a nagging right wrist issue last season, the Cardinals have been willing – truly, eager – to accept slightly below average offensive contributions for the tradeoff of outstanding defense.

Given his ability to play an outstanding shortstop, second, and center field, building the pillars of a defense up the middle has allowed the Cardinals to shore up their pitching staff and have comfort in knowing that whatever discomfort he’s feeling on the field is unlikely to show. As much as that has been to the benefit of his managers on the field, it now is taking on arguably a greater role in the decisions being made by the front office. Indeed, much of the team’s offseason planning for their positional depth has been centered on Edman’s ability to plan for center but shift to short at a moment’s notice.

He is their human safety net, and they are more than willing to avail themselves of those comforts. By all measures, the team is eager for Masyn Winn to assert himself as the starting shortstop in spring training. Last season’s extended dress rehearsal demonstrated his burgeoning elite fielding ability and top tier speed, but as was expected, the bat lagged behind. That’s both a natural course of events for young hitters in general and an anticipated outcome specifically for Winn, who underwent similar adjustment periods as he moved through the system before ultimately establishing himself as a dangerous hitter.

Adjusting to the minors, though, is a notch easier than doing so in the big leagues. The Cardinals have every confidence that Winn will be a star player in all phases of the game, but it’s less immediately evident to them whether he can be so from opening day in 2024. He will almost certainly triumph in whatever paper competition is ostensibly set up for him in camp, but the question of whether he produces enough early in the season is an open one, especially if the team as a whole lags behind. Enter Edman, who has several times been named as the starter in center even as the Cardinals have intentionally tiptoed to the line of doing so with Winn but demonstrably stopped short.

With two more seasons under team control and a salary climbing through arbitration, this winter would ordinarily have served as a natural inflection point at which the team could seek to flip him for high level pitching talent if they were unsure about making the necessary contractual commitment to him ahead of free agency.

The Cardinals are counting on rookie Masyn Winn to win the starting job at shortstop in 2024. Jeff Roberson AP They haven’t done so, and have shown no inclination to do so. Nor have they seriously pushed to trade Dylan Carlson following two consecutive down seasons. Carlson, when healthy, is an adequate Major League center fielder, and in 2021, demonstrated that he can be a positive contributor on a regular basis on both sides of the ball. The Cardinals have cast him currently as their fourth outfielder, and given their roster construction, that is ideally where he fits – unless and until things change with Winn and Edman is needed elsewhere.

What appears from many angles to be an oversized coterie of players up the middle, considering the expected time share at second base between same-platoon-sided Brendan Donovan and Nolan Gorman, is indeed contingent on things working out to design without any setbacks.

That has not been the team’s luck in recent years and may not be a realistic expectation for how player development is likely to unfold. Winn, who doesn’t turn 22 until August, may not yet be as solid an offensive contributor as he will someday be. Should he, or his team, start slow, the front office is likely to turn relatively quickly to a trusted contingency plan.

Edman is that plan, just as he has been since taking over at second base during his first callup in 2019. That quickly became a shift to third, where stayed for most of the year (while not playing right field). He was the insurance policy then for Kolten Wong, Matt Carpenter and Dexter Fowler. He’s in the same spot, but the specific beneficiaries have changed.

The policy holders continue to be thrilled with their returns. JEFF JONES Jeff Jones is a freelance sports writer and member of the Baseball Writers Association of America. He is a frequent contributor to the Belleville News-Democrat, mlb.com and other sports websites. Take Us With You Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand.