Miss me?

Well, dear reader, I certainly missed you. It’s been far too long since we last spoke — five weeks, to be exact. In my last column, I gushed about USC baseball’s 7-0 start, posing a critical question: Is baseball back?

The Trojans have given us their answer: an emphatic, resounding yes.

In hindsight, it’s almost cute how excited I was over a mere seven wins. Perhaps my extensive ball knowledge had foretold the reckoning to come. Either way, USC wasn’t even close to finished, rattling off 19 straight wins to start the season — the best start in the 138-year history of the program — and vaulting itself into the national conversation where it belongs.

While the Trojans have since come down to “earth” — by that, I mean they’re only 8-3 in their last 11 games — they’re still firmly in the mix for the best teams in the sport, with a No. 12 ranking and 27-3 overall record. And in my opinion, there’s one man who deserves more credit for this miracle first half of the season than any other: junior pitcher Mason Edwards.

Who is the best pitcher in the world? A week ago, I may have told you the answer was Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes, but he didn’t even make it out of the first inning of his Opening Day start last week. Pathetic. Instead, I propose to you USC’s very own Edwards. 

When I covered the Trojans’ season-opening series against Pepperdine back in February, I had the pleasure of watching Edwards deliver a near-spotless start: five innings, one hit, no runs, nine strikeouts. Impressive stuff.

But then, it just kept happening. Second start: six hitless innings, 11 strikeouts. Third start: seven hitless innings, 11 strikeouts. Edwards didn’t allow a single run until his 30th inning of work, when he gave up a solo home run against Northwestern that cut USC’s lead to … 12.

Though he finally suffered his first just-okay start this season against Maryland on Friday, giving up four runs — two of them unearned — and failing to make it out of the fifth inning, he still put up over 10 strikeouts for the sixth consecutive game. And, most importantly, the Trojans won, eking out an 11-10 victory despite giving up eight unanswered runs to end the game.

After Friday’s game, USC now sits at 7-0 when Edwards starts. While that may not seem very impressive given the whole “only three losses” thing, none of the other Trojan starters can claim the same; not even sophomore Grant Govel, who has arguably been almost as good as Edwards for much of the season.

But as any fan of Jacob deGrom knows, wins and losses aren’t everything; the team’s 7-0 record is just as reliant on how the offense performs. So what do Edwards’ individual stats look like?

They’re alright. Through seven starts, Edwards boasts a 0.67 ERA — insert 6-7 joke — while averaging 16.6 strikeouts to just 2.5 hits per nine innings. Those first two stats rank second in all of Division I baseball, while the minuscule number of hits allowed is miles ahead of any other pitcher in the game.

For comparison, when Skenes swept the National Player of the Year awards with LSU in 2023, he had a 1.69 ERA, and averaged 15.3 strikeouts and 5.3 hits per nine. Edwards has been substantially better than that. No. 1 overall pick, anyone?

Now, I’m not going to act like Edwards has faced the same caliber of competition; the gauntlet that is SEC baseball isn’t exactly comparable to the relatively weak Big Ten, let alone the nonconference schedule that only barely got USC in the Top 25 despite going 12-0.

But at a certain point, good pitching is just good pitching, man. It’s not like Edwards has faced nobody, either: He completely shut down an Illinois offense that has put up double-digit runs eight times this year — more times than the Trojans have done so — and gave up zero hits to Cal Poly, which averages nearly 11 per game.

And don’t just take my word for it! On Tuesday, Perfect Game named Edwards as the Midseason Pitcher of the Year, saying he could go down as one of USC’s “best starting pitchers of all time” — a list that includes Hall of Famers Randy Johnson and Tom Seaver. 

While there’s still another half of the season to play, the recipient of the midseason award has gone on to win National Pitcher of the Year honors in three of the last four seasons, and all four were first-round picks in their subsequent MLB drafts.

All of this is to say: If you aren’t paying attention to Edwards yet, you’d better start now. Every time he takes the mound is another chance to see history. One day, you can tell your kids that you got to watch Mason Edwards pitch while he was still just in college — before he became a first-ballot Hall of Famer with the 18-time World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals.

My condolences to Mike Trout, automatic balls and strikes, and the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament for missing the cut on this week’s column topic. Maybe next time.

Bennett Christofferson is a junior writing about baseball’s biggest stories and controversies in his column, “Dugout Diaries,” which runs every other Thursday. He is also a sports editor at the Daily Trojan.