When the 2025 season ended, it did not close gently for Tommy Edman. It limped to a stop, wrapped in ice bags, training room visits and one final decision that no athlete wants to make. Surgery.
Edman is now deep into recovery from an ankle operation that cost him months of availability and certainty. In recent comments, he described the experience not as a setback, but as a reckoning. A year that was supposed to be momentum instead became maintenance. Games gave way to rehab. Adrenaline surrendered to patience.
There is no shortcut back, he says. Only repetition. Only hours that stretch quietly.
For the Los Angeles Dodgers, Edman’s health is not a footnote. It is part of the blueprint. A player capable of working both the infield and outfield is a roster luxury, and before the injury, Edman embodied it. Speed, defense, contact and flexibility were his currency. In 2025, all of it depreciated under pain.
“Your body tells you things you do not want to hear,” Edman said recently. “Eventually you have to listen.”
He listened.
The surgery was not simply corrective. It was emotional. Months of frustration culminated in a choice that promised fewer answers before delivering any relief. The first weeks on crutches were the hardest. Independence fades quickly when you cannot trust your own ankle. Routine becomes foreign. Sleep refuses to cooperate.
Recovery, Edman admits, has been humbling. There are days when progress does not look like progress. An extra degree of mobility. One more set without swelling. Rehab is less scoreboard and more whisper.
Yet there is also clarity in limitation.
Without games, there has been time to rethink style, to study movement and to learn restraint. Trainers emphasize balance where there was once bias. Strength where there was speed. Stability where there was ambition.
The Dodgers are watching closely. Their roster is designed for October, but October does not wait for anyone. Edman is not promised a place by reputation. He will earn it again with range and reliability, the same tools that once made him indispensable.
Inside the organization, optimism is guarded but genuine. Edman’s work ethic has never been questioned. This is not a player looking for rescue. This is a player mapping his own return.
The bigger story, however, is not just about baseball. It is about agency. About admitting the body is hurting even when the record says it should not be. About betting on a future when the present feels thin.
If all goes well, Edman expects to be ready to contribute in 2026. Not cautiously. Fully.
And when he returns, it will not be as a version trying to remember what he was.
It will be as one trying to become something stronger.
For a team chasing another title, that might be exactly what matters most.
Leave a Reply