KISSIMMEE, Fla. – Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman’s workload has been light in the early part of spring training, but his bat has been loud.
He hit his second home run Wednesday in just his sixth at-bat and 11th plate appearance of spring training, a two-run, opposite-field shot off Astros left-hander Neal Cotts in the third inning of a 9-5 Braves loss at Osceola County Stadium.
The Astros had a defensive shift on with a runner at second and one out, and Freeman said he just tried to hit a ground ball to the left side. Instead, he got it up in a stiff breeze and the ball carried over the left-field fence.
“When they shift you with a guy in scoring position it’s a free RBI, so that’s all I was trying to do,” he said. “I would have been fine if I’d hit a ball right at the third baseman. But I was able to stay inside that cutter and get the ball in the wind.”
The right wrist that caused Freeman to miss 44 games in 2015 and led the Braves to put together a conservative early playing schedule for him this spring wasn’t a problem on any of his three plate appearances Wednesday, including a first-inning walk against All-Star lefty Dallas Keuchel. In fact, he said it’s not caused any discomfort all spring.
“I feel absolutely no pain in my wrist,” Freeman said. “Everything feels great, now it’s just getting more reps. We’ll be starting to play some more games here in the next few days.”
The Braves also got a homer Wednesday from Freeman’s late-innings replacement, non-roster invitee Nate Freiman – pronounced FRY-man — who similarly got a ball up in the wind blowing out hard to left field.
Freeman’s games Tuesday and Wednesday were his first consecutive games of spring training (the Braves have played eight games).
“Played back-to-back days this week, then next week it’ll be three in a row, and that’s the last checkmark,” Freeman said. “Once I do that it’ll be full-bore and let it rock. Hopefully everything keeps going as smoothly as it is.”
He’s 3-for-7 with a double, two homers and five walks in five games, for a .667 on-base percentage and an OPS well over 2.000. It’s obviously an extremely small sample size and no one expects him to maintain anything close to that pace, but the fact he’s hit the ball hard and drawn a lot of walks early is most encouraging for him and for the Braves.
If you didn’t know, you might not believe this is a guy who didn’t swing a bat from the end of last season until Dec. 31, and didn’t hit any pitches thrown overhanded during the entire offseason before reporting to spring training.
“His swing is fine, his wrist is fine,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said. “We’ll stay on the program. He played two days in a row, he gets a couple of days off and then we’ll play him another two days in a row. But I’m pleased. I was always optimistic that he was going to able to do this, and it’s fine. You can’t ask for more.
“You wouldn’t expect that he’d be able to swing the bat like he has. Good for us.”
Even Freeman concedes he’s a bit surprised by how quickly he’s got his timing at the plate this spring. Physically, he’s had no problems with the wrist, which repeated injections and various therapies couldn’t keep pain-free in the second half of last season.
“It’s been a lot (of work), consistently in the training room getting everything done,” Freeman said. “It’s actually getting less and less (required) now to get everything going. Like today all I had to do was heat it up and it was good to go. Everything’s working out well. Got a slow-and-steady process going right now and I’ve got to take tomorrow off and come back and play back-to-back days again on Friday and Saturday.”
