The Los Angeles Dodgers were at or below .500 throughout most of April but managed to close the month on a season-high-tying three-game winning streak despite Freddie Freeman — a proven model of consistency — going into a slump.
The Dodgers have produced a winning record in the first month of the season in five consecutive years, and six of the last seven, with the only exception coming when the 2018 team was 12-16 after March/April.
“I mean, we would like to have put this together a lot quicker than we did. But we have been playing better baseball the last few games, few days,” Freeman said after the Dodgers completed a sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals.
“Obviously going in and losing Will (Smith) for a while with his concussion, felt like everyone was having babies at the same time. So it’s just nice to get everybody back together again and obviously play good baseball. The pitching has been great and scoring some runs all different kinds of ways. So it’s good.”
Freeman had previously described the Dodgers as being inconsistent, unable to pitch well when the offense scuffled, and experiencing a drop off with pitching when the lineup produced.
Now, however, the six-time All-Star believes the Dodgers have been a more complete team.
“I guess we’ll take a win any way we can get it,” Freeman said. “And the way we’ve been playing, kind of just treading water the first few weeks, it’s nice to put it all together at the end of April and go into May.
“It’s nice to play some good baseball in front of our home fans too, the few thousand people want to see us win, so it was nice to do that for three straight days.”
Freeman went 1-for-4 with a run scored, walk and stolen base on Sunday, bouncing back from having a four-game hitting streak snapped.
Freddie Freeman encouraged by Dodgers’ small ball
The Dodgers went 1-for-15 with runners in scoring position and were outhit by the Cardinals on Sunday, yet still managed to come away with a 6-3 win thanks in large part to productive outs.
“I felt like we manufactured all the runs today. Move them over, get them in. That was nice,” Freeman said.
“You can’t always win the games by hitting home runs and all that, so obviously yesterday with Clayton (Kershaw) being as great as he was, and today scoring runs a different way. The last 10 days, much better baseball we’ve been playing.”
Have you subscribed to the Dodger Blue YouTube channel? Be sure to ring the notification bell to watch player interviews, participate in shows and giveaways, and stay up to date on all Dodgers news and rumors!
