Freddie Freeman’s emotions not yet a concern for the Dodgers

By Pedro Moura
FOX Sports MLB Writer

As emotional as Freddie Freeman clearly remains about the end to his 15-season run with the Atlanta Braves, it’s difficult to argue that it is affecting his performance with the Dodgers. 

He is performing almost exactly at his superb career norms. He has been the most consistent member of a surprisingly shaky roster, on which so many of the other stars have struggled or sustained significant injuries.

All of that makes the ongoing drama surrounding his weekend return to Atlanta more of a curiosity than a concern for L.A. And it sure is curious. When was the last time anyone evinced that much emotion about which team pays them to play baseball?

Freddie Freeman’s emotional return to Atlanta

Ben Verlander talks about the emotional scene that unfolded in Atlanta as Freddie Freeman returned to Truist Park for the first time as a Los Angeles Dodger.

Freeman spent the weekend alternating between crying, hugging his former teammates and continuing to hit at his typical elite clip. The Braves’ mid-April visit to Los Angeles went similarly. Freeman spent hours on the first-base side of Dodger Stadium foul territory before games, catching up with Braves coaches, players and even beat reporters. 

Then he launched a couple of homers.

But those were the Dodgers’ 10th, 11th and 12th games of the season. It had been only one month since Freeman decided to leave the Braves. Now, the halfway point of the season is approaching, and Freeman is still speaking about closure — sometimes how he doesn’t need it, other times how he does.

“If you were in a relationship for 15 years, and it ended, you’re going to have feelings,” Freeman told reporters after reaching the next destination on this Dodgers road trip. “And I’ve had feelings. I’ve been going through this process of grieving, and now I’m in the healing process and the moving on process.”

In one sense, this is what many of us crave from the athletes for whom we root. We want them to care this much about the companies that employ them, and we swear them off when they leave for somewhere else. Freeman’s case is so much the opposite that it has unnerved some who wonder why he is still worried about his previous employer when his current one has so many strengths.

He’s close to home, a fact he emphasized at his introductory news conference. He’s obviously playing for a winner. And the Dodgers’ fan base, lead executives and top players have all already demonstrated affection for Freeman. Fans chanted his name in his first weeks playing at Dodger Stadium. President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman used the word “really” three times to emphasize how good he believes Freeman is. Mookie Betts has described him as a close friend.

Meanwhile, the Braves have made clear that they have moved on. When asked in April about Freeman’s departure, manager Brian Snitker brought up many other lesser players who also left the organization in free agency.

The closest thing to public criticism that Freeman has heard from the Dodgers was Clayton Kershaw’s remark to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution over the weekend, saying that he hoped the Dodgers were not “second fiddle” to Freeman. Notably, Kershaw himself chose to continue his 16-season relationship with the Dodgers last offseason instead of signing with the team closest to his home.

“I think whenever he gets comfortable over here,” Kershaw told the newspaper, “he’ll really enjoy it.” 

If Freeman has not been enjoying it so far, again, it’s not exactly evident in his play. He is walking, limiting his strikeouts, running the bases well and hitting line drives. He is playing every single game. His struggles to move on from his Braves tenure do not rate near the top of any list of the Dodgers’ biggest struggles so far this season. (To be clear, any such list should be asterisked with the fact that the team remained on a 100-win pace entering play Wednesday. But they have higher expectations in Los Angeles.)

Far higher on the Dodgers’ current list of concerns are injuries to Kershaw, Walker Buehler and, now, Betts, as well as poor performance from Justin Turner, Max Muncy and Craig Kimbrel. Freeman is doing precisely what the Dodgers envisioned he would when they swooped in to beat the Braves’ offer.

Although, because of deferred money, because of reported agent negligence, it might be that the Dodgers’ offer didn’t actually beat the Braves’. And it’s difficult to draw any other conclusion from this weekend’s events than that Freeman wanted to re-sign with Atlanta if the offers truly were tied — or even close to tied.

It’s far too late for anything to change, and the only way that becomes a problem for the Dodgers is if Freeman is so incapable of moving on that it affects his performance or if that incapability affects his relationship with his teammates. That’s possible.

But given his output through three months, it seems more likely that Freeman will play well enough to be just fine in Los Angeles.

Pedro Moura is the national baseball writer for FOX Sports. He previous covered the Dodgers for three seasons for The Athletic and, before that, the Angels and Dodgers for five seasons for the Orange County Register and L.A. Times. More previously, he covered his alma mater, USC, for ESPNLosAngeles.com. The son of Brazilian immigrants, he grew up in the Southern California suburbs. His first book, “How to Beat a Broken Game,” came out this spring. Follow him on Twitter @pedromoura.