Freddie Freeman endured his worst offensive season since first putting on a Dodgers uniform, defined by a dramatic power outage where he hit just one home run over his final 66 games.
Freeman never finished any season hitting 21 home runs over his first four seasons as a Dodger. This included a two-month stretch in 2025 where he hit just two home runs over a two-month frame, but he still finished with 24 overall.
His final home run of the first half this year came on July 4 against the San Diego Padres,
finishing the first half of the season with 15 home runs while slashing .290/.375/.487. Freeman still managed to maintain his pure contact ability at an elite level entering the second half, hitting .338 over his first 39 games, but he had just nine extra-base hits over that time, all of them doubles.
Freeman snapped his 47-game home run drought with a three-run shot against left-hander Brycen Mautz of the St. Louis Cardinals on Sept. 2. While the team posted a 13-5 record over the final 18 games with him in the lineup, Freeman limped his way to the tune of a .167/.208/.167 slash line with zero extra-base hits.
The first-round bye gave the Dodgers a much-needed week of rest, with guys like Freeman and Shohei Ohtani having dealt with lingering issues that crippled their second-half production. The culprit behind Freeman’s drop-off was a case of patellar tendonitis in his right knee. Although Freeman took a stumble into the visitor’s dugout against the Kansas City Royals on Aug. 12, he noted that the issue didn’t stem from that play.
“I was having trouble moving [on defense]. I didn’t have a front side anymore [in my swing],” Freeman said of the way the injury had initially impacted him. “It just got to the point where it wasn’t giving me the best opportunity to play like I want to.”
Freeman experienced a similar fate two years ago when he suffered a sprained ankle during the Dodgers’ final regular season series. His production took a sharp nosedive over the team’s first two postseason series, but he ultimately managed to hit four home runs in a World Series MVP-winning five game clash with the Yankees.
So far this postseason, Freeman has managed to quickly turn the page on a woeful end to the regular season. His first big moment came against Grant Holmes on Sunday, smashing a solo home run that put the Dodgers on the board. The ultimate test for the NLDS came on Tuesday against left-hander Chris Sale, the only pitcher to toss a complete game shutout against the Dodgers in the regular season. After Kiké Hernández started the scoring with a two-run home run in the fourth inning, Freeman followed suit with his second blast in as many games, totaling his postseason home run total from last year’s title run.
Freeman’s adjustment this time around didn’t pertain to his knee issues, as he remarked that all he needed to do was open up his shoulders a couple inches to get better swings on the ball.
“The first couple days of the bye week, you’re just trying to figure out when looking at video what’s worked in the past, what it looks like in set-up, and we found something where my shoulders were a little too turned. All I really did was just open my shoulders a couple inches. Baseball is a game of inches.”
In the same stadium that Freeman called home for his final five years as a member of the Atlanta Braves, the Dodgers now go up against right-hander Tyler Mahle with the hopes of advancing to their third consecutive NLCS.
