PHILADELPHIA – Well-traveled catcher David Freitas was traded in 2012 for Kurt Suzuki and traded in 2013 for Jim Johnson. Now he’s teammates with both.
“Baseball is a small world,” said Freitas, who was called up by the Braves from Triple-A Gwinnett after they decided to put catcher Tyler Flowers on the 10-day disabled list.
Freitas, 28, found out Tuesday night and joined the Braves for Wednesday’s doubleheader against the Phillies, penciled in to catch the second game for his major league debut. He signed a minor league contract with the Braves in November and hit .263 with three homers, 21 RBIs and a .338 on-base percentage in 72 games for Gwinnett.
His first call to the majors came from his Gwinnett manager after a Triple-A rainout Tuesday night at Norfolk, Va.
“It was raining hard and I couldn’t answer my phone when Damon Berryhill called me,” said Freitas, who is 6 feet 3 and a muscular 225 pounds. “And then once I got under some cover and answered, he said, ‘Freit, you’re going up to the big leagues tomorrow.’ I was excited. I called my family right away, told them about it and they started booking flights.”
His mother, brother, and wife (with Freitas’ young son) scrambled to book flights from California and were en route to Philadelphia early Wednesday.
“They called me this morning after I woke up,” Freitas said. “They were in the airport and I was watching the sunrise, so they had been in the airport all night. I feel more bad for them than me. Especially my son, he’s two years old. He not a real fan of airplanes. Or seat belts.”
But the inconvenience figured to be more than worth it to see the big moment that Freitas and his family and friends had been waiting for and wondering when it might happen. It finally came with his fifth organization.
“I always hoped for it,” Freitas said. “This is what you want when you sign up at four years old for T-ball; this is the end goal. So I’m always looking forward to that.”
Freitas, a native of Wilton, Calif., near Sacramento, was a 15th-round draft pick by the Nationals out of the University of Hawaii in 2010. He was a Single-A South Atlantic League All-Star in 2011 and got traded in 2012 to Oakland for Suzuki, whom he’ll now back up with the Braves until Flowers returns.
The Braves had planned to bring Freitas up on Sept. 1 anyway as a third catcher on the expanded September roster. He’ll move to third-catcher status when Flowers returns.
Freitas was traded from Oakland to Baltimore in December 2013 as the player to be named later in the Johnson trade. And in December 2015, the Cubs took Freitas in the minor league phase of the Rule 5 draft.
In his eight-year minor league career with 10 teams, he has a .272 average with 57 home runs and a .358 OBP in 672 games and 2,321 at-bats.
Braves manager Brian Snitker, a longtime former minor league manager, always told his Triple-A players to be ready, that they were only a phone call away from the big leagues if the Braves had an injury or other situation that required a replacement. Freitas viewed it the same way.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I was in Gwinnett but my mindset is, baseball is baseball. And if you stay ready and keep yourself as read as you possibly can every single day, when they do make that call you know you’ll be ready to go up there. That’s how I look at it. You’ve got a lot of guys coming up and down from the big leagues anyway, you’re playing against most of these guys anyway. Especially from the catching standpoint, too, catching all these pitchers and a couple of rehabbers, too. A lot of the guys that I caught throughout the year are now here, so that works out pretty good.”
