One day after laying out a plan that had Freddie Freeman starting four of the Braves’ final six games and being available to pinch-hit in the other two, the plan was scrapped due to increased pain in his troublesome right wrist.
There’s a chance that Freeman won’t do anything more than pinch-hit in the remaining five games of the season, which ends Sunday. And at that point, Freeman will be re-examined to determine if surgery is recommended or if rest would likely be sufficient to allow him to play a full season in 2016 without recurring problems in the wrist.
Freeman did divulge Wednesday that he has a bone spur in the wrist, after previous diagnoses mentioned only a bone bruise and sprain. He spent nearly six weeks on the disabled list during June and July for the wrist, which never healed completely despite multiple injections and a variety of treatments.
The pain worsened in the past couple of weeks and he left games during the middle innings. After having the wrist re-examined Monday on the team’s day off and being told he could play as long as the discomfort was tolerable, Freeman was in the lineup for Tuesday’s 2-1 win against the Nationals. He played the entire game, went 0-for-3 with two strikeouts, and could be seen grimacing after several swings.
“It started hurting a little more than normal yesterday,” said Freeman, who was out of the lineup Wednesday. “Every day it starts out with about the same pain, and for some reason yesterday as the game went on it got increasingly worse. But as I woke up today it’s back to the starting point again, so I guess that’s one good positive sign out of it. But for now I’m day-to-day, and I will be available, but as for starting games, I don’t know if that’s going to happen anymore.
“But I will be available to pinch-hit (Wednesday). I’m not going to rule out starting any games, because if I don’t play tonight, if I don’t get to pinch-hit, maybe with a day off to rest maybe something good will happen and I’ll be able to play Thursday. But as of right now, I’m just going to be pinch-hitting.”
After going 9-for-22 (.402) with three doubles, two homers and 10 RBIs in a seven-game stretch through Friday at Miami, Freeman was 0-for-7 with two walks and three strikeouts in his past three games through Tuesday.
Freeman smiled and said he would hope to have an impact like he did Friday at New York, when he came off the bench to hit a two-run pinch-hit double in the eighth inning and three-run homer in the ninth in a 6-3 win against the Mets.
“(Pinch-hitting is) the plan,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said of a plan revised entirely since the previous day in light of Freeman’s painful struggles Tuesday. “Unless he comes in and says I feel great, right now we’re going to use him off the bench, one at-bat, play defense, let’s see where he’s at. The doctor says the more he swings, the worst the symptoms get. He’s going to get one at-bat. I’m glad he’s come out and said that instead of saying, ‘I’m done for the rest of the time.’ It’s a nice bullet to have any time you use him.”
“We’ll give him a heads-up when we’re going to use him, go in there and warm it up, use him hopefully in some spot where we can take advantage of his defense. Because his defense is pretty darn good over there.”
Plenty of people have suggested Freeman should say he’s done for the season. The team certainly would not blame him or try to change his mind. He’s the one insisting he wants to keep playing, and the Braves have permitted it because their doctors have assured them that Freeman isn’t likely to worsen the situation by playing.
He was re-examined Monday by Braves hand specialist Dr. Gary Lourie.
“Everybody probably wants to shut it down, but I just can’t do that,” Freeman said. “As Dr. Lourie told me a couple of days ago, it’s not going to get worse. And from going through what I did yesterday, and coming back and waking up and it’s back to square one, where the pain started – it didn’t stay at the pain level that I ended with last night – so obviously it didn’t get worse, it’s just staying the same. It only gets worse as I play multiple at-bats for a nine-inning game.”
The wrist was painful Friday night in New York when he had the two huge hits off the bench, but Freeman said he can bear it for an at-bat or two.
“As I get multiple at-bats in a game, the more I have to get hot for an at-bat, then with it being my right hand — I don’t really use it at first base because it’s not really doing much other than throwing to infielders — it gets cold again,” he said. “And then having to get it hot again for another at-bat, it aggravates it a little bit more, and I think that’s what caused the pain and the game went on, as you guys could probably tell (Tuesday).”
Adding to his frustration is the fact that he had a few pain-free weeks following his initial DL stint. He’s played with varying degrees of discomfort since. In the past couple of weeks the discomfort became more painful, he’s made a couple of mid-game exits after it became too painful to swing the bat
“We just looked at it (Monday), we did X-rays,” Freeman said. “There’s a little bone spur down there, but nothing to really cause any harm, I don’t think we need to go in there and shave it down or anything like that. Obviously the main goal is to avoid surgery at all costs, because I don’t want to waste the whole offseason just trying to rehab my wrist. Once we get the MRI (next week, after the season ends), maybe we’ll have to go do a CT scan or whatever the bone scan things are, and really get down to every examination to really figure out what’s causing this.”
Freeman hit .299 with 20 doubles, 12 homers and a .520 slugging percentage in 66 games before his initial DL stint for the wrist injury, and has hit .244 with seven doubles, six homers and a .400 slugging percentage in 48 games since.
“When I came back from it there was three weeks of pain-free, then all of a sudden it came back again,” he said. “So obviously there’s not just the bone bruise in there, there’s got to be something else causing it. Because I have a very high pain tolerance, and it’s gotten to the pain where it’s affecting how I play.”
