Freddie Freeman made a candid statement last week in Washington about his sluggish early season offensive performance, the Braves first baseman and franchise player saying he wasn’t able to catch up to fastballs that he normally hits, despite being healthy.
“My bat speed is just not there,” Freeman said. “I don’t know if I’m tensing my shoulders and I’ve got to get loose; that’s what I was just working on” in an early batting-practice session that day.
After going 1-for-24 with nine strikeouts in a period after his homer in his first at-bat of the season, Freeman rebounded from his hitless series at Washington to go 4-for-11 with a double in the next three games at Miami, including two of his only three strikeout-less games this season.
But then he went 1-for-9 in the first two games of a home series against the Dodgers before Thursday, including a low point in his season Wednesday when he went 0-for-5 with four strikeouts, three of those strikeouts coming with at least one runner on base and two with runners in scoring position.
After working with hitting coach Kevin Seitzer on correcting some things Seitzer noticed while studying video Thursday morning, Freeman went 1-for-4 with a single, a walk and a strikeout in Thursday’s 10-inning, series-finale loss to the Dodgers.
“I haven’t been loading,” Freeman said, referring to the segment of his swing just before he brings the bat forward. “It’s just been kind of stepping into the ball instead of loading and getting my (front) foot down. We’ve kind of known it was there and trying to work on it. I feel great up there, just not getting any results.
“It’s been a rough 15 games, so hopefully it starts coming here soon.”
The night before, during Wednesday’s four-strikeout game, Freeman slumped his shoulders and trudged back to the dugout after a couple of those whiffs, looking as close to defeated as we’ve seen him look.
That dropped his average entering Thursday to .156 (7-for-45) with nine walks, 15 strikeouts, a .321 OBP and .244 slugging percentage, for a .566 OPS that ranked 88th among 98 National League qualifiers.
Nearly two hours before Thursday’s 12:10 p.m. game, Seitzer came out of the film room and was on his way to talk with Freeman when a reporter asked about the slumping slugger.
“We just locked in on some more stuff after last night, and I’m going to find him right now,” Seitzer said. “A couple of mechanical things. We’ll see.”
They were the kind of adjustments that Seitzer believed Freeman could make relatively easily, not things that would require a long process.
“Oh, no, no, no,” he said. “Micro tweets. I thought the last few days the bat speed’s coming back, like in Miami it was back. And then last night, I mean it was like in the middle of the game, I just saw him kind of revert. And I’m going to go address that and just one more thing. So, just a couple of mechanical things.”
