Freddie Freeman is expected to be back in the Los Angeles Dodgers lineup on Friday night for the start of a pivotal series against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Freeman missed all three games against the Baltimore Orioles due to lingering discomfort with the hairline fracture in his right middle finger. He started six games in a row before the Dodgers elected to give their All-Star first baseman a strategic break.
The brief time off certainly was not enough for Freeman’s fracture to heal, but the Dodgers viewed it as beneficial nonetheless.
“I think it’s more of, you’re either going to take four to six weeks, which was not going to be an option, or you try to hopefully let the initial pain and discomfort maybe dissipate a little bit,” manager Dave Roberts explained.
While Freeman was given — and arguably needed — a break from playing, the expectation is he will remain in the Dodgers lineup for the rest of the regular season.
“I think once we take this little respite of three days, four days with the off day, we’re just going to turn him loose. Hopefully over time, in the weeks to come, it’ll start feeling a little bit better and be less uncomfortable,” Roberts said.
“But once he’s back in the lineup, I don’t expect him to come out.”
Freeman historically plays nearly every game each season, and previously didn’t take a day of rest with the Dodgers until after the team clinched the National League West.
Diamondbacks series was factor with Freddie Freeman
Given the Dodgers are heading into the final month of the season in a competitive NL West race and have four games on the docket with the Diamondbacks, there was some strategy to providing Freeman with an opportunity to improve physically early in the week.
“That was part of the math,” Roberts admitted. “I think the hope was if we could get him from working every day as far as the hitting, the workload with the finger, his swing wasn’t right. I think that’s a common thought with where he was at and how he was swinging the bat.
“So to have something linger over the course of the next six weeks, didn’t seem like the best way to go about things. So if we could sort of play the slice, get him off his feet for a few days and hopefully let the finger kind of calm down and then get him back in there.”
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