John Edman, the family patriarch, played shortstop at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., majored in economics, minored in mathematics and then earned a graduate degree in statistics at the University of Michigan while working as a graduate assistant baseball coach for the Wolverines. He is in his third decade as a high school baseball coach and beginning his 22nd season in charge at La Jolla Country Day School in San Diego, where two of his players have gone on to the majors — his son Tommy and Alfonso Rivas, a first baseman and outfielder who was called up by the Chicago Cubs last summer.
M.L.B. Off-Season Updates
- Lockout: With negotiations going slowly, the players asked for negotiations to be held in Florida rather than New York.
- A Question of Brinkmanship: Tyler Kepner is wondering how M.L.B. will find its way out of this mess after a lack of urgency set the process back.
- Guilty on Both Counts: Eric Kay, a former Angels employee, was found criminally responsible in the overdose death of Tyler Skaggs, a pitcher for the team who died in 2019.
- A Hall of Famer: David Ortiz, who led the Red Sox to three World Series titles, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year on the ballot.
“This marriage never would have worked out if I didn’t love baseball as much as my husband did,” said Maureen Edman, who listened to Dodgers and Angels games nightly while growing up in Southern California. When she returned to Williams for studies in late summer, her mother, in the days before the internet, mailed Los Angeles Times sports sections to her so she could keep up with her hometown baseball news.
Maureen and John Edman’s children inherited the math genes — and the infield dirt. Johnny, who majored in applied math at Wheaton College in Illinois, was the scorekeeper for his father’s teams by the time he was in first grade, working a PalmPilot so well that adults were flummoxed when asked to work his system. Tommy majored in math and computational science at Stanford before St. Louis picked him in the sixth round of the 2016 amateur draft. Elise majored in computer science and minored in data science while playing volleyball at Davidson College.
“I realized I didn’t have a future playing, but I’ve always known about the other side of the game,” Johnny Edman said. “‘Moneyball’ was one of my favorite books.” He added: “I love numbers, love how it can help drive decision making on player acquisitions and in player development.”
His mother, comparing him to the Oakland Athletics executive at the center of “Moneyball,” said: “He basically wanted to be Billy Beane. We did that math, and we said: ‘Johnny, you know, it would be easier to be Wil Myers. There are more players than G.M.s in the majors.”