First, the meme made Freddie Freeman laugh.
Then, in a serendipitous twist, it gave him a lightning-bulb epiphany about his recently ailing swing.
At the end of a long day during last week’s homestand — when Freeman was hit by a pitch on July 20, immediately removed from the game to get an X-ray, then informed he somehow hadn’t sustained serious injury — the first baseman received a comical video edit on Instagram from a friend. A light reprieve at the end of a stressful afternoon.
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In it, Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in last year’s World Series was superimposed over a spin-off of the Coldplay kiss cam video that recently went viral on social media (yes, that Coldplay kiss cam).
Freeman got a chuckle out of the clip in which the couple who were infamously shown at a recent Coldplay concert are edited to look like they are instead reacting to his iconic slam.
But, while rewatching his Fall Classic moment, Freeman also drew an observation from something in his batting stance.
“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.
So, for the rest of that evening, Freeman thought about the difference (which, he joked, kept him up for much of the night). The next afternoon, he went straight into the Dodgers’ batting cages, focused on driving into his front ankle in an attempt to get his swing realigned.
“It’s a different thought of being in your legs when you’re hitting,” said Freeman, who had started the season batting .371 over his first 38 games, before slumping to a .232 mark over his next 49 contests. “It’s just more [about leaning] into my front ankle. It’s helping me be on time and on top [of the ball].”
“We’ll see,” he added with a chuckle, “how it goes in the game.”
Ten games later, it seems to be going pretty well.
Since making the tweak on July 21, Freeman is 14 for 39 (.359 average) with two home runs, four extra base hits, 10 RBIs and (most importantly) a renewed confidence at the plate.
After collecting his first three-hit game in a month Tuesday in Cincinnati, then his first home run in all of July the next day against the Reds, he stayed hot in the Dodgers’ series-opening 5-0 defeat of the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday, whacking a two-run double in the first inning and a solo home run in the fifth in front of a crowd of 10,046 at Steinbrenner Field (the New York Yankees’ spring training park serving as the Rays’ temporary home).
“That visual helped him kind of tap into something,” manager Dave Roberts said recently of Freeman’s post-meme swing adjustment. “He is early, for a change. Versus being late, chasing.”
On Friday, Freeman said he is no longer thinking about the ankle cue.
“I’m just getting in the box and swinging now,” he said. “I’ve been taking some pitches, working a couple of walks, getting deeper in counts, hitting the pitches I need to hit. … It’s just been, [get] in the box and [be] on time.”
Still, he acknowledged, the meme-inspired swing thought might have served as a helpful reset.
“I feel like I’ve been grinding for six, seven weeks … but obviously I’m trending in a great direction right now,” he said. “I just try and ride it. I know my work is usually going to end up working at some point.”
Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw delivers during a 5-0 win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday. (Jason Behnken / Associated Press)
Indeed, Freeman’s turnaround is something the Dodgers — who also got six scoreless innings out of Clayton Kershaw on Friday, lowering his season earned-run average to 3.29 in 13 starts — are expecting out of several superstar sluggers over the final two months of the regular season.
During Thursday’s trade deadline, the team didn’t splurge on big-name acquisitions. The only addition they made to their recently slumping lineup (which ranked 28th in the majors in scoring during July) was versatile outfielder Alex Call from the Washington Nationals.
Instead, both Roberts and club executives have preached of late, the team is banking on players like Mookie Betts (who is batting .237), Teoscar Hernández (who has hit .217 since returning from an adductor strain in May), Tommy Edman (who has hit .211 since returning from an ankle injury in May) and even Shohei Ohtani (who leads the National League in home runs, but is batting only .221 since resuming pitching duties in June) to play up to their typical, potent standards.
“I think if you look at it from the offensive side, as far as our guys, they’ll be the first to tell you they’ve got to perform better and more consistently,” Roberts said. “That’s something that we’re all counting on.”
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For much of the summer, Freeman had been squarely in that group of underperforming veteran stars.
But his recent rebound (regardless of what triggered it) is providing a template for the rest of the lineup to follow — the start, the Dodgers continue to hope, of more roster-wide improvements over the stretch run.
“Five or six months ago in spring training, we were talking about how great of a team we have,” Freeman said. “We still have that great of a team. Obviously, some of us haven’t played as well, so it’s on us to get going. And a few of us are getting going right now. I think we’re going to be just fine going forward.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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