“He’s involved, and his angles are spot on,” said Rick Monday, a Dodgers broadcaster and a former center fielder for the team. “If you see an outfielder, a center fielder particularly, and a foul ball is hit and that outfielder’s not moving, they’re not really playing the position. Well, he moves. He’s reading the ball off the bat. He gives himself a chance to get to the ball.”

Pederson saved a game for the Dodgers in San Diego last month, crashing into the wall for a sprinting, over-the-shoulder catch to rob Justin Upton of a winning hit. Pederson has won other games with his bat, which has produced just 38 singles but 36 extra-base hits, including home runs that average 431 feet. According to ESPN, that is the longest mark in the majors for anyone with at least 11 homers.

“The talent is off the charts,” said Mark McGwire, the Dodgers’ hitting coach, who hit 583 career home runs. “Now it’s just a matter of figuring out the game at this level.”

To give himself a chance to do that, though, Pederson first had to figure out his swing. He always expected to play in the majors — his father, Stu Pederson, had four at-bats for the Dodgers in 1985 — but did not make a team out of spring training in 2011, his first full season in the pros.

Left behind in Glendale, Ariz., Pederson hit every morning at the Dodgers’ complex and debated his swing with a coach, Johnny Washington. Even without much power, Pederson had always felt so sharp in practice that he saw no reason to change.

“Basically, I’m pretty gifted with some ability,” Pederson said. “I can go in the cage, in a low-energy, controlled environment, and hit 10 line drives off the back net, go off the tee and hit 10 line drives off the back net, go in B.P. and hit 10 line drives. If I want to hit a homer, I’ll hit a homer. And then I go into the game and struggle.