Baseball is a difficult sport, even for the very best players in the game. There are no cheat codes, no quick fixes, as success requires constant work, little tweaks here and there, a push and pull trying to find proper balance.
Nobody said it was easy.
Freddie Freeman will be inducted into the Hall of Fame one day, and started the All-Star Game this season, his ninth midsummer classic nod. But his season has been a wild ride interrupted intermittently early on by his ribs and right ankle, injuries
stemming from the end of last season.
Freeman was a world-beater in May, hitting .410/.462/.638 with a 202 wRC+, but over the next two months hit just .226/.304/.312 with a 76 wRC+, and in both June and July did not hit a home run until his final game of the month. Freeman was in a perpetual search of finding his swing, looking for anything to get him back to his usual self.
Enter the Coldplay kiss-cam and the memes it spawned, including a friend sending Freeman the meme but on the cam was his walk-off grand slam in Game 1 of the World Series. In that glimpse, Freeman found something, as Jack Harris explained in the Los Angeles Times on Friday:
“I’m more in my front ankle,” Freeman said of his stance during the at-bat.
It was a subtle, but profound, contrast to how he had been swinging amid his recent two-month cold spell — reminding him to reincorporate his legs more into his mechanics and not lean as far back in his setup at the plate.
Since July 21, the day after Freeman was sent the meme (after leaving the game after getting hit by a pitch on his wrist), the Dodgers first baseman has found his way again, and the results have been, well, astronomical.
He’s hitting .359/.432/.564 over his last 10 games, reaching base in all of them, including a home run on Wednesday in Cincinnati, and another home run and a two-run double on Friday in Tampa.
More from truebluela.com:
- Dodgers blank the Pirates behind Ross Stripling, trio of homers
- Andrew Toles returns to Triple-A lineup after missing 46 games
- Dodgers 2018 MLB draft tracker
- Caleb Ferguson to join Dodgers for major league debut
- Position players headline Day 2 of the draft for the Dodgers
- Dodgers draft LHP John Rooney in the 3rd round, No. 104 overall
