Freddie Freeman to miss at least a week after being placed on injured list
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PHILADELPHIA — Freddie Freeman’s latest ankle issue will keep him out longer than initially expected.
During the Dodgers’ travel day to Philadelphia on Thursday, the team announced Freeman had been placed on the 10-day injured list, retroactive to March 31. The move means Freeman won’t be eligible to return until the following weekend, when the club returns home for a three-game series against the Chicago Cubs April 11 to 13.
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Freeman has been out since he slipped in the shower at his home Sunday and fell, aggravating the right ankle he had surgically repaired this offseason. He experienced swelling in his ankle and has required extensive sessions of treatment from the training staff.
Despite that, he went through two days of routine pregame work this week while missing all three games against the Atlanta Braves. And the initial expectation — after X-rays and an MRI on his ankle came back clean — was that he would be available for the start of the team’s trip to Philadelphia and Washington on Friday.
On Tuesday night manager Dave Roberts said there was even a 50/50 shot of Freeman being back in the lineup Wednesday.
Instead, Freeman is on the IL for the first time in his Dodgers career — and the first time for a reason other than COVID-19 since he suffered a wrist fracture with the Braves in 2017.
“I think the thought was, he could have played, but we just felt that, even in talking to Freddie and the training staff, there was potential downside if we played him to make it worse,” Roberts said. “Giving him more time, putting him on the IL, made the most sense. And he wasn’t too thrilled about it, as we would all expect, but understood it.”
Even before his slip in the shower, Freeman’s ankle — which he sprained in the last week of the regular season last year and had surgically repaired after playing through the Dodgers’ World Series run — was not yet back to 100%.
Throughout spring training and the opening week of the season, he still required close to an hour of daily pregame treatment. After playing three straight games against the Detroit Tigers last week, he said it was “getting a little stiff” near the end of the series.
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While Freeman said those issues were “nothing to be ever worried about,” Roberts noted that they “could have lingered all year.”
Thus, in the wake of his shower mishap, the team saw opportunity to give him rest, and let his ankle progress.
“Not to say that we expect it to be 100% when he comes off [the IL],” Roberts said. “But I just think that it’s something that we give a chance to kind of maintain, versus continually going backward as the season progressed. That’s something we just didn’t want him to fight all year.”
In a corresponding roster move Friday, the Dodgers called up triple-A catcher Hunter Feduccia, a left-handed bat who can also fill in at first in Freeman’s absence (though will likely be limited to pinch-hitting duties off the bench).
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