MIAMI — When Braves spring training began and ended with Freddie Freeman, the reigning National League MVP, still unsigned beyond this season, there was growing concern among the fan base. The once-unimaginable thought of the Braves not re-signing the face-of-the-franchise first baseman, who’s as popular in the clubhouse as he is in the community, became a topic of discussion on social media. And it still is.
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Freeman, 31, talked openly during spring training about how hard it was to leave his wife, Chelsea, at their home in Southern California and report to work this year after the offseason births of two new sons, the couple’s second and third boys. And as camp wore on, he ached to see them.
Given Freeman’s contract situation and his slow start at the plate — he was hitting .195 with a .733 OPS after 31 games, albeit with hard-hit metrics that still ranked among the NL leaders — it didn’t take much for many Braves fans and media members to conflate all of it and assume, based on Freeman’s body language and sometimes emotionless expressions during many games, that he was no longer as upbeat and cheerful about being with the Braves as he had always seemed to be.
During an interview with The Athletic before batting practice Friday in Miami, Freeman addressed all of those matters and cleared up some misperceptions about where he is regarding the contract situation.
His offensive stats have improved significantly since early May, and he was voted to start in the All-Star Game for the third consecutive time. He’ll be joined in Tuesday’s Midsummer Classic in Denver by teammates Ronald Acuña Jr., voted an All-Star starter for the second time, and Ozzie Albies, selected as a reserve.
Freeman had a .311 average and .909 OPS in his previous 54 games before Friday’s series opener at Miami, when he hit his 18th home run, a first-inning shot to right-center field that was the only run in the game until Albies’ RBI double in the seventh. Austin Riley added an RBI triple in the seventh, and the Braves went on to win 5-0 and get back to within a game of .500 (43-44) with two games left before the break. Charlie Morton (8-3) pitched seven innings of two-hit ball, with two walks and seven strikeouts.
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Here’s a transcript of the Freeman interview, edited slightly for clarity.
With all that’s happened these past few months, how would you evaluate the first half of the season? Has to be one of the strangest ones you’ve had, huh?
Definitely. It’s definitely been one of the strangest. But I feel like I’ve hit the ball well all year, so it’s been more of a frustrating-for-the-results kind of year. I feel like the prep and everything I do in the game and hitting the ball hard, there’s nothing different. It’s just the results — I didn’t get them for a while. Obviously, I’ve gotten the results over the last month or so, so that’s definitely helped, the frustration level has calmed down. But it was definitely different. It was weird. It was testing my patience big time. I was like, maybe I should try and do something else, like try and aim it somewhere else than I normally do. But I’ve done it for so long and it’s worked for so long that I knew, if I kept hitting the ball hard like I was, it was going to change.
I had some homers and walks at the beginning of the year, so that kind of helped my mentality a little. And obviously the hits are starting to fall now, so … it’s been a grind. You appreciate what you go through when it comes out on the other side. It feels like I’ve just had that success for a long time, just rolling it over each and every year. I haven’t really gone through something like that in a while — in a few years, actually. Probably 2016, the beginning of that year. So it’s nice to just kind of get back down to the ground and realize how hard this game is. All the work you can do, you can do everything right and still never have results in this game. That’s the crazy thing.
And you probably were uncomfortable early in the season, sounding to some people like you were making excuses.
Yeah, there’s no excuse. I’d rather hit groundballs, I’d rather get 45-mile-an-hour exit velocity hits (than line into outs). This game has gone very advanced in the metrics and all that. I knew I was hitting the ball hard and all the exit velocity and all that, but this game, the way I came up, is batting average, home runs, RBIs. It’s what you did. It’s a results-driven league. I knew I was hitting the ball. It would have been different if I was striking out a lot and not hitting the ball hard. I knew my past seasons and knew that it was going to turn around. It did help having my dad tell me that “it’s going to change.” At some point, there were definitely times where I was like, man, I don’t know if it’s going to change. That’s the hardest thing (when you’re not getting results) is to keep the same consistent approach.
It must feel good to know that you’ve reached such a station in your career that you get voted to start for the third consecutive All-Star Game, even with the Dodgers’ Max Muncy producing some huge numbers while playing primarily first base for such a high-profile team.
No one when you’re done playing is going to look at (who started). All they see is All-Star games, they don’t see All-Star Game starts. Being an All-Star, that’s the main thing. Some people can start, another person doesn’t start — it doesn’t matter, you’re all the same, you’re all All-Stars. If you’re an All-Star, you’re one of the best in the league. That’s all you can take away from there. But you know, being able to get voted in by the fans for three straight years, it does feel good. It makes you take a step back and realize that you’ve influenced a lot of people in a good way, to make them want to vote for you. And it feels good. It means you’re going about your business the right way. If you play the game hard, a lot of people around the league respect you.
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The Braves’ front-office people told me that I won the players’ (All-Star) vote as well. It just feels good. Like, everything you’ve done in your career has kind of come full circle. People care and appreciate and respect what you do. If you have the respect of the fans and of other players, I think that’s all you can really ask for in this game. As I’m getting older — I’m about to be 32, my 11th full season — it’s nice to be appreciated by people around the league and the country, by baseball fans. Three straight years as a starter, it’s pretty cool.
Going through what you’ve dealt with this season, and what the team’s gone through, how much have you missed having a guy like Nick Markakis, having some guys older than you in the clubhouse? Did you guys miss their leadership at times when you or the team has struggled?
When you have multiple guys like Brian McCann and me and Nick Markakis, multiple stoic-type guys, guys that play every single day, that want to be in the lineup every single day — no matter how you feel, you’re going to be out there. And you need those veteran presences in the lineup. We’re not going to rah-rah you. I believe in this game you can’t rah-rah someone to throw harder, swing harder. You can’t do that in this game. You actually have to learn how to control and slow down. We’ve got swords and stuff. (Smiles.) It’s a roller coaster of emotions. And I’m always that one guy, you always see I just sit (quietly) in the same spot in the dugout. And that’s just how it is.
(But) I think with what we’ve gone through, I don’t know if we’ve missed that. We have so many different things that we’ve dealt with this year, that I don’t know if another veteran’s leadership — I mean, it is what it is. We’ve lost (Travis) d’Arnaud, who’s been in the league for 10 years. We have (Marcell) Ozuna, who’s dealing with what he’s dealing with. So those are veteran guys that we’ve lost. I don’t know if we’re missing the veteran leadership, because we still have it. It’s just, we’ve dealt with a lot. We’ve dealt with injuries; we’ve got so many guys on the 60-day (injured list).
In this game, you can cover a couple of weeks of losing your middle-of-the-lineup kind of guys. You can cover that for a week or two. It’s hard to cover that for a couple of months, you know? You can go around this league and take (number) 3 and 4 out of every single lineup, and they’re going to get exposed. So for us to be only 4 1/2 games back … I know you look at our record and we’re two games under (.500) and this and that. But to be where we’re at, and there’s still a shot …
The big thing is, the next (stretch) after the All-Star break. Those two weeks, going up until the trade deadline, is huge. You can either be right in it or so far out of it come that time. I think we’ve got Rays and Padres at home after the break, then we’ve got the Phillies and the Mets for five (at New York), and I think the Brewers are coming after that — because (Milwaukee’s) Jace Peterson texted me, “I’ll see you at the end of the month.” So that must mean the Brewers are coming, too (July 30-Aug. 1).
So it’s going to be a big thing. And to still have a chance — if things go right this weekend, you never know, we can influence the front office to go do some stuff (before the trade deadline). That’s what it all is, for me, is to try to help the team influence them to go buy. That’s what you want. I mean, when you have a GM — I don’t think (Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos) has missed the playoffs since, what, ’13 or ’14? So he wants to be there just as much as we do.
We’ve lost some veteran guys that play this year, and that’s to our (credit) because you’ve still got Charlie Morton, you’ve got Drew Smyly, you’ve got me, you’ve got guys — Dansby (Swanson) has been around for five years. Even our young guys — Ronald, this is his fourth year. And Ozzie has been here since ’17. So our young guys are starting to get experience. They’re not old, but they’re experienced. So we’ve all been through it. We’ve all been there. We’ve just dealt with a lot more the last couple of years.
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Have you guys been able to maintain the same close-knit clubhouse this year, with everything that you guys have gone through?
We are as close as all the other (recent Braves) teams, if not closer. We really are. We’ve got so many (leaders and contributors). You’ve got Josh Tomlin and Will Smith in the bullpen — they’ve got that locked down. You’ve got Charlie Morton and Max Fried, you’ve got Ian Anderson — they’re all locked in. We’ve got our group up here. And then we combine — we’re sitting on the plane, and we’ve got our awesome plane back, where we can play cards and stuff. So things are going well again for us.
It’s baseball. It’s so hard, this game. It really is. I know it looks really easy when the ball is right down the middle, but we’re still trying to cover four other pitches that the guy is throwing. We know we’re good. We’ve dealt with a lot. We haven’t been playing like we could, but we’re only 4 1/2 games back, and we’ve still got a very good chance.
Are you enjoying yourself as much this year, with all you’ve dealt with on and off the field?
I have. Oh, yeah.
Because people see you and note that maybe you’ve not been smiling as much on the field as before, that kind of thing, and they wonder if you’re still enjoying yourself as much as you clearly did in the past.
It’s baseball. How can you not have fun playing baseball? At the beginning of the year, maybe not. I was dealing with not seeing my family for 40 days at spring training and whatnot. That was definitely hard, watching my son (Charlie) play baseball through a phone when we’re playing the Blue Jays on Saturday and it’s 11:30 and I’m by myself in my hotel room watching that. Those are tough. Then you come to the yard and try to cheer up and stuff. But we had that week at home (in May), then we went three games at Milwaukee and had another week at home. That was huge for me. I really connected with my newborns then. That was big for me.
There’s nothing … I’m the same person in the dugout. I don’t know (about) the smile meter of Freddie, I don’t get it. (Laughs.)
But a lot of people tend to read into that, fewer smiles on the field, and they assume you’re not enjoying yourself. So you can officially say that you’re still happy here, you’re not like, “If you don’t sign me now, trade me.”
No! No, I’m ecstatic to be here. I’m having so much fun. How can you not have fun playing baseball every single day? And it’s making me appreciate what we’ve accomplished over the last three years as well. … I’ve always said, this game is so fun. Just because I’m not grinning from ear to ear in the fifth inning when the camera pans on me doesn’t mean I’m not having fun.
But people are attached to you, they care about you, so they get angry when they think you’re not having as much fun …
Well, how do they know how I’m feeling through a TV? Believe me, I’m having fun, I’m having a great time. I’m in Miami, Florida, on July 9, and I get to play baseball.
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So struggling a little on the field, by your standards, had nothing to do with anything off the field?
No. I wasn’t really struggling, I just wasn’t getting results. And results — I came up at a time when results, that’s all anybody cared about. I’m not into hard-hit (balls), exit velocity and all that. I don’t know how you can smile when you go 0-for-4 with four strikeouts, or four lineouts. I’m not happy when we lose. I don’t see how I could be smiling when the camera pans on me in the top of the seventh.
I’m happy. I really am. We’ve got a great group. The coaching staff’s amazing. I was talking to Alex the other night, he was in Rome (Georgia), watching the boys (Braves’ High-A affiliate) play down there. And, like, there’s nothing that’s changed. Believe me, I’m happy.
People worry about you, man. It’s a contract year, some of them say, “They’re messing with Freddie, this ain’t right,” and that kind of thing.
There’s nothing like that going on. Believe me. I’m good.
So you’re still hopeful that you’re going to stay here with Atlanta?
Well, obviously. This is 15 years I’ve been with this organization. I don’t know anything else.
And you’re not ready to look for anything else, I assume?
I’m not ready to look anywhere else. I’m still here with the Braves, and we’ve got three months left (in the season), and I hope something gets done. I do. But I’m just a player, so I can’t really do anything, you know? It’s not up to me. It’s not up to me to bring the contract up to me. So I don’t really know what people want me to say. I’m happy.
You know how rumors get started and spread — like, someone said on social media that you recently sold your house in Atlanta.
I have not sold my house. (Laughs.) I have multiple houses that I rent out to other people. I haven’t sold anything. Just because I have a house in California, where I grew up, doesn’t mean that I don’t want to be in Atlanta.
It doesn’t mean you’re ready to go play for the Angels? (We both smile; it was a joke.)
No. I grew up in Orange County, and we want my sons to be outside in the wintertime. You can’t do that in 25 degrees in Atlanta. That’s why I go home, OK? It’s not because I don’t want to be in Atlanta. It’s just because we want our kids not to be inside (all winter). And we have a lot of help (Freeman’s family) out there, you know? I mean, my in-laws are in Florida, and they’re the only ones in the United States, because everyone else in Chelsea’s family is in England and Scotland. So we have all the help in California, so we’re going to go there (in the offseason).
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Obviously, when you can look at water every day, it’s a little better than looking at dark clouds and being in four jackets and trying to jump on a trampoline. It’s not that exciting for a 4-year-old. So that’s why we go there. My house is not sold in Atlanta. Maybe this will shut some rumors down. I am happy, believe me. I’m happy to put on a Braves uniform every day. I can’t control the stuff that happens. But what I have said over the last 10 years of my career is still true today, so I really hope that something works out in the next three months. If not, in the offseason, I don’t know. That’s not up to me. (Smiles.) Fans, it’s not up to me.
OK, I won’t ask you about it anymore. (Kidding.)
Believe me, I understand. I get it. I wish it wasn’t like this, I do. But we are here. But I still feel the same way I felt about this organization since Day 1. They gave me every opportunity to come up at 20 years old. Not many people get to go to the big leagues at 20 years old. And then they gave me what they did (eight-year, $135 million contract) when I was 23. This place is special.
I really hope something works out. I really do. Because this is all I’ve ever known. But I can’t control that.
And with that, Freeman smiled, gave a fist bump and headed up the hallway to the clubhouse.
(Photo: Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)
