LOS ANGELES — Freddie Freeman looked like himself again Saturday night, and the Dodgers needed every bit of it.

After opening the season with a lot of loud contact and not much to show for it, Freeman broke through in the Dodgers’ 3-2 win with a 3-for-4 night that included an RBI double. After the game, he sounded like a hitter who trusted his process all along and was glad to finally see the box score catch up. He also had a good view of another tight Dodgers win, one that ended with Will Smith’s birthday home run and another reminder of how many ways this lineup can beat you.

Hits Finally Fall

Freeman said, “Yeah, it was good. Obviously, I was just talking to Dylan about it. There’s different outs throughout the course of the year, and obviously there’s reason for optimism the last couple games. I have been feeling good pretty much all spring training, even the last couple games, even though I had nothing much to show for it. So definitely nice to get off the barrel on the first one and hit a flare up the middle. Once you get one, you can kind of rest easy. Then they play a shift on my third hit, and that was nice because then I was able to stay on a fastball and hit it to left field and on the line. So there’s a lot of things that happened for me tonight that was very positive. Obviously Will, on his birthday bobblehead night, go right a home run. Obviously pitching, key to the series. Starters, bullpen, awesome job.”

Freeman also got one of the strangest moments of the night when he was tagged out in what turned into a hug on the basepaths. He laughed about it afterward and seemed to enjoy the absurdity of the whole thing. “Well, I stopped and I was like, is there any way around this? If I go out of the baseline, I’m out. If I run back, we’ll just run to second. So he gave me a little, ‘come here.’ I said, ‘All right, let’s just do it.’ I didn’t think I’d ever be a part of a hug out on a baseball field, but I actually kind of forgot about that.” When he was asked if he is normally a hugger, Freeman smiled and said, “I’m very much a hugger. I think you guys all know that. Emotional man over here.”

“All-Stars Up and Down”

From there, Freeman got into what makes this Dodgers lineup so tough at the end of games. He made it clear that everybody in that room wants the big at-bat, and that belief runs through the whole order. “I think our whole lineup is a first choice. I’ve been talking like everyone on our team I feel like could hit third in the lineup. It’s just All-Stars up and down. I think everybody wants that at-bat. We all want to be in that situation. We all want to be the guy up there. If you don’t get it done, the next guy’s going to get it done. Will seems to be doing it all the time lately. That’s awesome.”

He kept going, and this is where Freeman really put his finger on why the Dodgers are 3-0. “Mookie takes his walk, gets on base. Yesterday, we saw Tommy roll over, getting a guy over. That’s the key. That’s why we’re 3-0. Those are the things that aren’t going to go on the box score that people aren’t going to talk about, but that’s how you win baseball games throughout the course of the season. It’s team baseball, and you’ve seen the last couple days.”

A Shared Approach at the Plate

Freeman said the group’s calm start at the plate comes from a shared approach and trust in the lineup behind each hitter. “We’re really good at controlling the strike zone. Obviously adding Kyle, he’s big at controlling the strike zone, looking over baseballs, just lengthening our lineup. Obviously, we would love to get more hits than we had the last couple days, but I think with our lineup, no one’s going to worry about that. It’s going to happen. Baseball’s hard. We’re going to go through our stretches where we don’t get the hits, but that’s the key. We got really good people on the rubber there too, that keep us in the game just long enough where we can come out and score some runs late in the game.”

He also pointed to the depth all over the roster. “We got a deep and talented lineup. You can see coming off the bench today, you have Max, you have Freeland. Then obviously the guys that started, you have Santiago, who was an All-Star a couple years ago. You have Miguel, who’s doing it all right now. So we just got a really good team right now and a good approach. Guys know their strike zones, what they’re trying to do at each and every at-bat, and it’s working so far.”

Loving the Trumpets

And because it was a Dodgers clubhouse after another close win, the night ended with one more grin. Asked about Edwin Díaz’s trumpet entrance, Freeman said, “I am. When Edwin comes in the game, that means something good’s happened for the Dodgers. So I’m a fan.”

That felt like a good way to sum up the night. Freeman got his hits. Smith got the big swing. The pitching carried the game deep enough for the lineup to find its moment. Three games in, the Dodgers already look like a team that is comfortable winning in a lot of different ways.

More Dodgers Coverage:

Have you subscribed to the Bleed Los Podcast YouTube channel? Be sure to ring the notification bell to watch player interviews, participate in shows & promotions, and stay up to date on all Dodgers news and rumors!

Related