Free will explains moral evil at best. It says nothing about tsunamis, childhood cancer, or animal suffering over millions of years, which is where the evidential problem of evil actually bites.

Correct, and the scope limit should be clear. The free will defense addresses the logical problem (is God compatible with any evil at all) and the moral-evil half of the evidential problem. Natural evil requires other responses: that a regular, law-governed world is necessary for free agents to act meaningfully (a world where fire never burned would be a world where no choice had consequences); that some natural evil results from non-human free agency, a view held by Augustine and Plantinga; or that natural evil belongs to a creation that is provisional and awaiting completion. Each is contested, and none is a knockdown.