Quiet to the point of being forgotten in the second half of the season, Freddie Freeman re-emerged for the Los Angeles Dodgers in their National League Division <a href="https://comicvibe.com/jay-z-in-8-how-to-watch-the-finale-of-the-hbo-documentary-series/” title=”'JAŸ-Z in 8': How to Watch The Finale of the HBO Documentary Series”>Series win over the Atlanta Braves.
And with Shohei Ohtani clearly compromised going into their best-of-seven National League Championship Series against the Milwaukee Brewers, manager Dave Roberts must have been satisfied to see Freeman, Max Muncy and Kiké Hernandez step up.
Freeman answered some questions with home runs in Games 2 and 3 and consistent hard contact in a hitless Game 4.
Now 37 years of age, he experienced a shocking second-half power outage, hitting just one home run in his last 66 games and went the final three weeks of the regular season without an extra-base hit while striking out 21 times.
To his credit, he let others use knee tendinitis as an excuse – although it’s still hampering him, as he elected to not stretch a single against the Braves, leaving Roberts to call it a smart move instead of a sign of health issues. “We talked about it,” Roberts said.
The one-week break while the Braves and Philadelphia Phillies played in their National League Wild Card Series might have been a tonic for Freeman.
“We found something where my shoulders were a little too turned,” Freeman said after Game 3 of the NLDS. “All I did, really, was opened my shoulders a couple of inches.
“Baseball,” he added, “is a game of inches.”
The Brewers have handled Freeman well throughout his career, but he had two doubles and a homer against them in last year’s four-game NLCS sweep, a series in which the Dodgers outscored the Brewers 15-4 after losing all six regular-season games between the teams.
The Brewers finished with the best regular-season record in the majors this season and they won four of the seven games against the Dodgers, including a four-game series in August in which they won three of four.
Roberts moved Freeman to the second spot in the order for Games 2 and 3, dropping Ohtani to fifth and fourth.
Freeman hit either third or fourth in 109 of his 153 starts, but Roberts indicated that if Ohtani is scuffling, he might give Freeman what amounts to an extra at-bat.
Of course, by now we all know that the Dodgers treat the 162 regular-season schedule as a nuisance. They have the payroll, depth and inclination to be the best sandbaggers in baseball history.
So, is Freeman just another Dodgers hitter who has switched into playoff mode?
Joey Votto thinks it’s simpler than that.
“I saw Freddie as a 21-year-old … and rare is the player who is better in the back half of his career,” the Toronto native told us on Blair and Barker. “I’m a firm believer that there are players where the game becomes their style, and Freddie is a player who is perfectly aligned with the modern style.
“I felt it was harder to hit in the first half of my career. There was more guessing … hunting balls off the plate …umpires (strike zones) were wider. Now that the strike zone has shrunk, a guy like Freddie with a nice, tight swing benefits from the rules and style change.
“He’s played so long that he’s basically been the perfect hitter for however the game is being played. This style of play is very much in his skillset.”
Freeman, the only active player with 2,500 hits, is very much a player to watch in this series. But he’s not the only one …
Jackson Chourio, LF, Brewers: Manager Pat Murphy describes Chourio as having a “beautiful spirit,” and the young outfielder has backed that up with a strong start to his career. He drove in six runs on just three hits during the Brewers’ series win over the Padres, giving him 17 RBIs in 16 career playoff games.
According to Sarah Langs, that ties Hall of Famer Andruw Jones for the most post-season RBIs by a player under 23, in 32 fewer games.
Chourio’s performance was crucial for the Brewers in a series where every at-bat mattered. Brewers and Padres hitters came to the plate with the score tied or within one run 80 per cent of the time, according to The Athletic’s Jayson Stark.
We’re at the point where teams need their stars to step up to win – especially in a longer, seven-game series – and Chourio might be the singularly most important hitter on either team.
David Schoenfield of ESPN delves into that walk-off hit off the Padres’ Mason Miller in Game 2 – on a 101 m.p.h. fastball after he’d fouled off 103.
As for Chourio’s defence? Ask the Padres.
William Contreras, C, Brewers: MLB Network analyst Mark DeRosa called Contreras the Brewers’ “enforcer” – it runs in the family if you’re familiar with his brother, Willson – but it was the quality of his at-bats that stood out in the NLDS, to the point where Padres manager Craig Stammen said he would have chosen Contreras the series’ most valuable player if they gave out awards in the NLDS.
Christian Yelich wears a ‘C’ for a reason, but Contreras, who led the Brewers with six hits, dictates what happens on the field. He is the only catcher in franchise history to have caught 1,000 innings in three consecutive seasons and this year he worked and is working with the youngest pitching staff in baseball, with their past 80 games started by pitchers in their 20s.
“And he calls our games out there,” adds Murphy. There’s a combustibility to Contreras: he was benched in September for failing to run out a ball and responded by sliding head-first into the bag in a subsequent game. He can pimp home runs with the best of them and burnt a challenge on the first pitch of Game 3 but, well, chaos is good. Chaos is fun.
Kiké Hernandez, IF-OF, Dodgers: No explanation needed, right, Blue Jays fans? He’s been on the winning team in his last eight playoff series and 18 of his 25 post-season series overall and is known far and wide as “not that (expletive) again.”
He is the only player in MLB history with 100 career at-bats to have hit 10 per cent of his career homers in the post-season. He’ll do something in this series. Better check those padded outfield walls at American Family Field – oh, and take it from Addison Barger: don’t stray too far off second on a ball hit to Hernandez.
Jacob Misiorowski, SP, Brewers: Back to the well again with this fella, even though he was more “Meh-ziorowski” in Game 1 of the NLDS. He still lit up the radar gun in the first inning, but what the hell was that diet of off-speed stuff in the second? “It was not the plan … I would have liked him continue to throw 104 over the plate,” Murphy said. “But they weren’t feeling good – Miz himself wasn’t – with the heater command.”
The Padres fouled off 30 pitches and sent him to the dugout after four innings. They whiffed just 11 times. Multiple starts are almost a certainty in a seven-game series – and it was notable that he was heating up in the bullpen in the ninth inning of the Brewers’ Game 4 win over the Padres.
Murphy is a manager who has removed pitchers mid-count and while the Brewers bullpen owned the Padres in the NLDS, throwing 19 innings (three more than its starters) and allowing just one run on a Jake Cronenworth HR, it will be tempting for Murphy to maximize the Miz. Small sample size and all that, but in three appearances against the Dodgers – a relief outing last post-season and two starts this season – the Miz has a 1.59 ERA and 27 strikeouts and three walks in 17 innings.
Max Muncy, 3B, Dodgers: Ol’ Max doesn’t do much in the post-season but hit bombs and drive in runs. Muncy had three homers in the NLDS – one of them off the bench – and has 19 homers and 40 RBIs in 84 playoff games, just two RBIs shy of Justin Turner’s club record.
He holds the all-time Dodger Stadium home run record (135, it’s a pitcher’s park, folks). “He’s a big-time player,” says his manager, Dave Roberts. “Goes unnoticed given all the star power we have on this team.” Not by us. Or his opponents.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, SP, Dodgers: You know what part of the magic formula is to a long post-season run? Have your starters throw more innings than your relievers in the regular season and the Dodgers relievers threw the fewest in the majors over the course of 162 games.
And as if their rotation depth isn’t enough, the time off between series allows Roberts to line up his rotation as he desires. Yamamoto’s seven innings of one-hit, 10-strikeout ball in Game 3 against the Braves made him the first pitcher in history to win five consecutive post-season games without allowing a run or walk in any of them. He’ll likely get the ball in Game 2 and, well, who knows where it goes from there, right, Blue Jays fans?
Jeff Blair’s pick: Dodgers in six.
