Edwards’ Winding Path Leads to Coney Island

Sit down to have a conversation with Andrew Edwards, and his life becomes an open book.

He’s happy to share about his baseball triumphs, the great outings at New Mexico State and the Arizona high school state championships. Now that Edwards is a Brooklyn Cyclone, no memory is sweeter than that time at his favorite coffee shop, hanging out with his parents and girlfriend, when the Mets called to tell him they had just made him a professional baseball player.

He also doesn’t shy away from talking about the obstacles he’s overcome. There was the diagnosis during his teenage years that solved a lifetime of frustration. Look closely enough at his throwing hand, too, and you’ll see the permanent reminder of a self-inflicted injury that nearly derailed the left-hander’s career.

Edwards knows he’s the product of his experiences — good ones and bad ones alike — and he’s not afraid to admit it.

All of those trials have brought the Tucson, Ariz. native to Coney Island, where he’s living out a childhood dream and excelling in the debut season of a career with big-league potential. The southpaw has been one of the anchors of the Cyclones’ bullpen, posting a 1.72 ERA and collecting three saves while holding opposing hitters to a paltry .137 average.

“It still really hasn’t set in that I’m a professional baseball player and that it’s a reality for me,” Edwards said. “I’m not sure when that’s going to set in. But it’s a pretty incredible feeling knowing that the thing that I’ve worked for since I was four years old is now a reality.”

Even though the 22-year-old has produced an excellent first month in Brooklyn, you can’t fault him for his continued disbelief. After all, his dream of playing pro baseball wasn’t always within reach.

From a young age, Edwards knew he was different from his peers. No matter how hard he tried, his ability to focus on any one thing was fleeting at best, a problem that affected both his athletics and academics.

Whenever he ran into a jam while on the mound at Desert Christian High School, his mind spun faster than the world’s greatest sprinter, darting uncontrollably between the runners on base and the batter at the plate.

Edwards remembers his struggles to focus, saying, “There’d be a runner on base, and instead of just focusing on, ‘Okay, the catcher put down fastball. I’m going to go to my fastball grip, and I’m going to throw the fastball.’ It was like, ‘Okay, there’s a runner at second, so I’m going to need to make sure I do the number of looks correctly. And I need to make sure he doesn’t get to third. And so in order to make sure he doesn’t get to third, I need to make the right pitch, and the right pitch to this right-handed hitter is going to be the fastball away because…’ Towards the end of my outings, my brain would be completely fried because I had exhausted it from all the overthinking I was doing.”

Following his freshman year, his mom Jenna, who works as a nurse practitioner, acted on a long-held suspicion about her eldest son. A brief search on Google led her to an at-home test to diagnose ADHD.

“It was 30 or 40 questions. It was based off of, if you answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a certain amount of questions, [the at-home test] would suggest getting [formally] tested,” Edwards said. “Out of the 40 questions that I took, I answered ‘yes’ to, like, 38 of them.”

A doctor’s visit later, Edwards was diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, commonly known as ADHD. The National Institute of Medical Health defines ADHD as “a disorder that makes it difficult for a person to pay attention and control impulsive behaviors. He or she may also be restless and almost constantly active.”

He was placed on medication to help him focus, and the daily prescription made a near-instant impact. As a freshman, his attention span lasted long enough to write only a few sentences of a research paper. The turning point came the following year while working on an essay Edwards vividly recalls, a paper for English class about the effects of violent video games on a teenager’s brain.

“I wrote two pages in one straight sitting, and it was just me typing along. It was totally normal and totally easy,” Edwards said. “That’s when it first clicked, like, ‘This is so much easier now that I can actually concentrate on things.’ It felt like the Energizer bunny was going on in my brain before I started taking [medication], and now it’s just this totally mellow and totally easy lifestyle.”

After his diagnosis, things took off in Edwards’ baseball career as well. He became the ace of Desert Christian’s pitching staff and led the Eagles to Arizona state titles in each of his final three seasons. He finished his senior campaign with an 11–0 record, a 0.58 ERA, and 123 strikeouts in just 60.2 innings.

Division 1 offers followed, but Edwards opted for the junior college route, spending his first two collegiate years at nearby Central Arizona College before vaulting to New Mexico State for his upperclassman seasons.

By then a known commodity around baseball circles in the Southwest, the southpaw was recruited to New Mexico State to be “one of the guys,” as Edwards’ pitching coach with the Aggies, Anthony Claggett, recalls.

“He was supposed to be a starter — whether it was on the weekends or the midweek, one of our most talented arms. It was a lot of expectations for him,” Claggett said. “I think that first year it got to him a little bit. Being a young kid with high expectations and not meeting up to the standard that he wants, it put some pressure on him.”

A rough debut appearance in February of 2018 against Texas Tech, in which Edwards conceded five runs and allowed two home runs in 1.1 innings, started the snowballing effect of his mounting frustration. He made six more relief outings through the end of March, none especially impressive for a pitcher accustomed to success.

The breaking point came on April 3, 2018 in a rematch at Texas Tech. Edwards entered in the fifth inning with a chance to erase the memory of his rocky Division 1 debut, but it quickly devolved into his worst nightmare. He plunked the leadoff hitter on the first pitch, and he walked the next batter on five pitches. He was then removed from the game, left to deal with another bad outing.

A season of unfulfilled, self-held expectations finally caused Edwards to break. Once in the dugout, he punched a wall, instantly breaking the ring and pinky fingers in his left hand.

“I got hit around a lot, and I would freak out about somebody getting nothing more than a single off me, let alone an extra-base hit,” Edwards said. “I was so [stuck] in my own head about how the year had gone, because it wasn’t what I had expected it to be. The outing against Texas Tech was just the boiling point for me.”

Surgery was set up for later that week, but the initial prognosis was grim.

“The surgeon who performed the repair on my hand, prior to the surgery, said, ‘Andrew, I’m going to do my best, but I’m not sure if you’ll ever be able to pitch competitively again.’ It was that bad of a break,” Edwards said.

The southpaw emerged from surgery with two plates and 12 screws in his left hand, but he was assured he would be able to pitch again. Determined to redeem himself, Edwards attacked his rehab. The surgeon’s best-case scenario had his patient starting a basic throwing program in August, but the rising senior pitched four innings in a summer game on July 24.

By the time his final season of college baseball arrived, Edwards had a new approach, one that was free of expectations.

“After the injury, [Andrew] really handled himself well. He took on the role [of doing] whatever was going to help the team,” Claggett, who pitched briefly for the Yankees and Pirates in 2009, said. ‘He took a little pressure off of himself and gave himself a chance to further his career in the game.”

That role was working as a left-handed reliever, and Edwards flourished in it. He finished the spring with a 4.37 ERA and 30 strikeouts in 22.2 relief innings. He even got a shot at redemption against Texas Tech, throwing a combined scoreless inning in two outings against the Red Raiders.

“He could come into roles out of the bullpen where we needed a strikeout. He was that kind of guy for us because he had electric stuff,” Claggett said. “Every once in a while, we put him in a role with a lefty-lefty matchup, but he could also face right-handers because he has a pretty good changeup as well. Predominantly, it was the fastball, and the fastball was above-average, especially at the Division 1 level.”

Having put it all together as a senior, Edwards realized that pitching in pro ball — and living his childhood dream — was once again a possibility. A number of scouts saw him pitch during his final year in the Western Athletic Conference, but Edwards says there was only one MLB team he talked to frequently: the Mets. A strong relationship formed with Mets area scout Brian Reid, and Edwards landed firmly on the ballclub’s radar.

Sure enough, when the 31st round of last month’s MLB Draft rolled around, Edwards heard his name called. He was heading to New York.

“It still is the most unbelievable experience that I’ve ever had. It’s honestly still so surreal for me,” Edwards said. “My mom got a video of the whole thing going down, and there will be times where I’ll go back and watch it, just to remind myself that it actually happened.”

The Arizona-born left-hander is now eight relief appearances into his pro career in Coney Island, and his four-pitch mix of a low-90s four-seamer, a two-seam fastball, a slider, and a changeup has helped him keep New York-Penn League hitters off balance all season.

It’s also part of the reason why Edwards may not be in Brooklyn for the rest of the summer.

“He’s got 92, 93 [mph] on his fastball. He’s got good command on his pitches, and he has a pretty good idea of what he’s doing on the mound,” Cyclones pitching coach Josue Matos said. “He’s really good with his scouting reports, so that puts him in a different level of the game… He’s the kind of guy that’s got the chance to move up sometime soon this year or next year.”

No matter what’s next in Andrew Edwards’ career, he knows how he’s gotten to this point, the result of all the achievements and adversity he speaks openly about.

He is one of a number of professional athletes with ADHD, joining a growing list that includes decorated Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and former All-Star outfielder Shane Victorino. He hopes being open about living with ADHD will erase the stigma of having a learning disability.

“The last ‘D’ in ADHD is ‘disorder,’ and I think that’s about the worst word you could use for it, because by no means is it a disorder,” Edwards said. “It’s just something that you’re born with, and it’s like being born with blue eyes as opposed to brown.”

After completing rehab on his broken fingers, Edwards’ mom offered to pay for plastic surgery to remove the noticeable scar running down the side of her son’s left hand. Andrew didn’t want it.

“Part of the reason I’m so open about it is that they’ve made me the man and the baseball player I am today. I wear ADHD like I wear my scar. It’s a reminder that this was an obstacle I had to overcome to get here,” Edwards said. “I think that [nobody should] be afraid of differences they have. They should be able to wear it on their chests and say, ‘You know what, I did break my hand. I do have ADHD. But I’m here, and you’re here.’ It means that I’ve had a tough road, but I’ve been able to overcome it and get to where I am today.”

— Dom

Today’s Game: Brooklyn vs. Tri-City, 7 p.m.
MCU Park, Coney Island, NY
Probables: RHP Frank Valentino (1–1, 3.20) vs. RHP Kyle Serrano (0–1, 7.20)
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Radio: BrooklynCyclones.com/listen
Tickets: BrooklynCyclones.com/tickets