The Braves are now a two-Freeman team.
They brought up left-handed reliever Sam Freeman — no relation to Freddie — from Triple-A Gwinnett on Thursday to take the bullpen spot of Matt Wisler, who was optioned to Gwinnett late Wednesday after his second poor outing in as many nights against the Mets.
Freeman, 29, had an 0.97 ERA in nine appearances at Gwinnett, allowing five hits, one earned run and six walks with eight strikeouts in 10 1/3 innings.
“He’s been throwing the ball over (the plate),” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “He’s had good velocity, he’s been really efficient, and his stuff — in talking to the guys (at Gwinnett), they’re like, this guy’s legit. He’s been throwing really, really good. I saw he threw 12 pitches last night and struck out two in an inning.”
The Braves signed the well-traveled lefty to a minor league deal in October and invited Freeman to major league spring training, where he pitched in two Grapefruit League games and gave up six hits and six runs in one inning before being sent to minor league camp.
What’s he done differently since getting sent down in the spring?
“Really just committing to each pitch, just committing to whatever I’m trying to accomplish out there,” Freeman said. “Just more confident in myself, not second-guessing myself is the big thing.”
Wisler, 24, had a 12.60 ERA in four relief appearances for the Braves and gave up a grand slam in the ninth inning Tuesday. A former highly rated prospect, he had a 3.50 ERA in three starts at Gwinnett before he was brought up when the Braves had a bullpen need and thought he might fare well, particularly in multi-inning stints.
Wisler allowed just one hit in three scoreless innings of his first two relief appearances. But he gave up four hits and four runs in two-thirds of an inning Tuesday and four hits, three runs and two walks in 1 1/3 innings Wednesday.
“He’ll start, he’ll go back in the (Gwinnett) rotation, push the reset button a little bit,” Snitker said. “Let him get back on a routine. The kid, we’re still — I still like him. I mean, his stuff’s too good. It didn’t hurt him — it did, but it didn’t — to experience this. So hopefully he can go back down there and right himself.
“We’re going to need him again before this year’s over.”
Freeman had a 2.74 ERA in 88 2/3 innings over 111 major league appearances in a three-season span through 2015 with the Cardinals and Rangers before spending most of 2016 in Triple-A and posting a 12.91 ERA in his only seven appearances for Milwaukee.
He was teammates with current Braves pitchers Jaime Garcia and Jason Motte in St. Louis and seemed comfortable after joining the team Thursday afternoon at SunTrust Park.
“No butterflies or anything like that,” he said. “Just ready to do my job.”
He has a 3.87 ERA in 142 career appearances in parts of five major league seasons and is known for having “reverse splits” — a .202 opponents’ batting average and .580 OPS in 293 plate appearances by right-handed batters, compared with .283/.820 in 184 plate appearances by lefties.
Right-handers hit .167 against him in 2015 when Freeman had a career-high 54 appearances for the Rangers; lefties hit .281 against him that season.
Freeman said that disparity was due to his stubborness to work on his slider and use it against lefties for many years, relying instead almost entirely on fastballs. He said he’s more confident now using the slider to give lefty hitters something to think about other than just fastballs.
Against right-handed hitters, his split-finger pitch has always been effective.
A 32nd-round draft pick by the Cardinals in 2008 out of the University of Kansas, he made his major league debut in June 2012. While spending most of 2014-15 with St. Louis and Texas, Freeman had 75 strikeouts with 44 walks in 76 1/3 innings over 98 appearances.
The Braves transferred injured reliever Dan Winkler from the 10-day disabled list to the 60-day DL to open a 40-man roster spot for Freeman.
