Freeman the fielder is pretty good, too

2010: Mark Teixeira (Yankees), Albert Pujols (St. Louis).

2009: Mark Teixeira (Yankees), Adrian Gonzalez (San Diego).

2008: Carlos Pena (Tampa Bay), Adrian Gonzalez (San Diego).

So, Freddie, about that stretch. That ridiculous, part Olga Korbut, part Gumby thing you do when the play at first base is going to be close and you have to extend beyond the pale for the put-out throw.

One leg stretched flat at 6 o’clock, toe anchored to the bag. The other leg straight out at 12 o’clock. Know what time that is? Time to visit a good repair shop because after doing those kind of splits, somebody’s going to have to weld you back together, son.

Does such an unnatural thing for a 6-foot-5 fellow come naturally? Have you always been able to make the play that causes grown men in the stands to cringe?

“Well, I couldn’t do it for you now,” Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman said while killing time in the clubhouse during spring training. Not that anyone was asking.

“But I could always do it come game time.”

Certain demands accompany the position Freeman chose to make his own. First basemen had better hit the ball — and the farther the better. Freeman, just 23, has obliged with 44 home runs over his first two full seasons with the Braves. Despite persistent vision problems and an injured finger, he played in 147 games and was the team leader in RBIs a season ago. And he’ll have ample opportunity to repeat if some of the team’s newbies in the lineup reach base as often as they should.

There are defensive chores over on that corner of the infield, too. First base isn’t just the place you stick the lummox who has nowhere else to go, regardless of multiple beer-league softball examples.

Here’s the thing: “I take a lot of pride in picking balls and catching everything I can,” Freeman said. “When the balls come over there and you pick one in the dirt and see the reactions from the infielders and the pitcher, that gives you a nice burst of energy.”

There is no reliable way to quantify the slick fielder at first. Freeman scoffs at the stats that attempt it, the ones that last season did not mark him as anything special. Be it fielding percentage (17th among major league first basemen) or other numbers that try to factor a fielder’s range (sixth in something called range factor, according to ESPN).

“Those don’t mean anything. How does a computer determine range?” Freeman wondered.

Indeed, this part of his craft is more appreciated than measured. His deftness around the bag, whether it’s diving for a ball headed for trouble down the line or digging a wayward throw out of the clay, has been a revelation, a nice little bonus to his bat.

When witnessing the gymnastics at first, there is no clue of the raw product that came to professional baseball like a lot of other offensively obsessed youngsters. They grow up in California — Freeman was an Orange County kid — like they do everywhere else, preferring to work in the medium of wood ahead of leather.

“I didn’t get aware of defense until I got to low-A (in the minors). I didn’t emphasize defense until then,” Freeman said.

As an 18-year-old rookie playing in the Gulf Coast League in 2007 and then in Rome the following year, Freemen was not pleased with his glove work. “I was just missing balls for some reason,” he said.

At high-A Myrtle Beach, the manager of the Pelicans in 2009 grew accustomed to one particularly insistent chirp.

“Hey, Rocket, c’mon, let’s go, give me my picks.”

Rocket Wheeler, now the manager with the Braves’ affiliate in the Gulf Coast rookie league, heard that almost daily from his first baseman in training. How could he not comply with someone so eager? Out he’d go to first base with Freeman and start throwing balls in the dirt. And the kid would start picking, preparing for the bad throws that were sure to come.

“He loved doing them. To me that was the biggest plus with him, how much he wanted to work at it,” Wheeler said.

There was a certain fundamental seriousness that Freeman and his father, also named Fred, brought to the hitting part of the program. In their batting-practice sessions, dad would not let him even think about trying the pull the ball early in the drills. His ability to hit to all fields is one of his great strengths today (Freeman hit .259 last season, his average suffering because of the injuries).

When Freeman began applying that same kind of ethic to his fielding drills, the results were immediate. By his next step up the ladder, Freeman was named the best defensive first baseman in Double-A by Baseball America.

The product is not so measurable as his work at the plate, nor is it so readily appreciated by the paying customers.

“Talk to the infielders,” Wheeler said. “The guys who play with him every day will tell you they make that one bad throw that’s off line, and he’ll pick it. That’s a value in him that people don’t see as much.”

OK, let’s ask.

“He made my year defensively a lot better, saving errors by picking balls that might come short or coming off the bag and tagging a runner,” second baseman Dan Uggla said. “Really unbelievable, his instincts over there.

“I don’t care where I throw it as long as I get it over there. If it’s not too high over his head he’s going to make the play somehow, someway.”

There is a good deal of chatter lately about Freeman’s presence at the plate. For good reason, with him hitting .373 with seven home runs through Wednesday in the small sample size of spring. The eyes and all the other body parts are fresh and functioning.

“Maybe the most naturally talented hitter we have in the lineup,” gushed manager Fredi Gonzalez. “(Hitting coach) Greg Walker thinks there may not be a better young hitter. And he’s growing and getting better and maturing as a hitter.”

Hitting always will top the Freeman bullet points. But the profile is incomplete if up high you don’t also include the part where he slips on a glove about the size of jai-alai cesta and starts corralling baseballs that aim to run cage-free-chicken wild.