MILWAUKEE – Because he started the season so slow and is on pace for a career-high strikeout total, plenty of observers have wondered or asked, what is wrong with Freddie Freeman?
To which Braves manager Brian Snitker had a succinct answer late Wednesday, after Freeman went 3-for-3 with two home runs and a walk in a loss to the Brewers, giving him his fourth 20-plus home run season and first since 2013.
“There’s nothing wrong with Freddie,” Snitker said. “He’s a normal person; he’s human. He probably, in some of those situations, feels the weight of the world on his shoulders. But like I said before, when you handle adversity, there’s usually something good on the other side of it, and he always does.”
Freeman is on the other side of it now, surging and looking capable of putting an offense on his back and carrying it a good ways. In his 50 games through Wednesday he had a .320 average (62-for-194) with 36 extra-base hits (five triples, 11 home runs), 24 walks, 58 strikeouts, a .400 on-base percentage and .624 slugging percentage.
The Braves are 25-25 in those games, their turnaround beginning simultaneously with his, on June 15.
In Freeman’s 63 games through June 14, he hit .248 (58-for-234) with 21 extra-base hits, 29 walks, 70 strikeouts, a .343 OBP and .432 slugging percentage. The Braves were 18-46 in that span (he’s played all but one game this season).
He had 16 extra-base hits including seven homers and 16 RBIs in his past 28 games before Thursday’s series finale at Milwaukee, and for the season he was batting .280 with a .369 OBP and .519 slugging percentage, with 27 doubles, a career-high six triples, 21 homers and 48 RBIs in 113 games.
The slugging mark would be a career high, if he keeps it up. His .887 OPS entering Thursday would be his highest since a career-best .897 OPS in 2013, when he hit .319 with a .396 OBP and a career-high 109 RBIs.
Freeman smiled and cracked a joke when someone mentioned to him Thursday that despite the erratic nature of his season, he was still on pace for some career-best statistics including home runs (he’s only two shy of his career-high of 23, done twice).
“I might turn grey by the time I’m 27 after this year,” said Freeman, who’ll be 27 on Sept. 12. “It’s been a tough one. Obviously it’s been really roller-coasty, been up high and down real fast. Still got 45-plus games to go. I’m not going to look at the numbers right now, but I know the extra-base hits are there, I’ve been getting some hits, I just need to keep going and start doing with some guys on base.”
Ah, those “situations” that Snitker referenced in the paragraph above. At-bats with runners on base and particularly with runners in scoring position.
Freeman hit 14 of his 21 homers with bases empty, and he entered Thursday hitting just .213 (19-for-89) with runners in scoring position, after leading the majors with a .376 average (35-for-93) in those situations in an injury-plagued 2015 season.
He hit .294 with runners in scoring position in 2014, and in his first three seasons through 2013, Freeman hit .305 (127-for-417) in those situations. Until this season, he thrived in that aspect of the game. But in most of those seasons Freeman had one or more other power hitters in the lineup with him and stopping him wasn’t the only thing on opposing teams’ scouting reports.
This year, until the Braves’ recent trade for Matt Kemp they didn’t have a conventional power hitter behind No. 3 hitter Freeman. That undoubtedly affected both the approach that opposing pitchers took against him and, almost certainly, the pressure that Freeman felt to come through in those situations.
The big first baseman would never admit the latter, of course. It’s not like him to make excuses, just as it’s not like him to come out of the lineup unless he’s forced out of it by injury.
He had 25 walks and a .390 OBP with runners in scoring position before Thursday, but also 37 strikeouts in those 89 at-bats. And that – all that — was pretty much a microcosm of his season.
When Freeman went through a particularly brutal four-game stretch last week in which he was 1-for-16 with one walk and 11 strikeouts, plenty of fans and some media members said it was time for the Braves to sit Freeman for a game or two. Snitker approached him after the fourth game of that skid – and 0-for-4, four-strikeout game Friday at St. Louis – and asked Freeman if he thought a day off could help him.
“I’ve got to hand it to him, the one thing Freddie doesn’t want to do is take a day off and regroup,” Snitker said. “He’s like, ‘How can I get hot if I don’t play?’ And I agree. I totally agree with him. He handles it, and you’re seeing the results of staying with him, I think.”
The next day Freeman went 3-for-3 with a home run and two walks in a win against the Cardinals, the first of a four-game winning streak for the Braves. In five games since telling Snitker he didn’t want to come out of the lineup, Freeman was 7-for-17 with three homers, five RBIs, six walks, two strikeouts and a .565 OBP.
