PHILADELPHIA — Freddie Freeman sat down after the Dodgers’ 4-3 escape in Philadelphia looking equal parts relieved and proud. His double in the seventh sparked the decisive rally, and his scoop in the ninth quite literally saved the game.
“Luzardo was amazing,” Freeman said of the Phillies’ lefthander. “Ninety-six to ninety-nine with the slider, sweeper, and changeups. That was a tough game for us.” When Teoscar Hernández reached in the seventh, Freeman focused on doing anything to keep the inning alive. “You’re just trying not to ground into a double play,” he said. “I lifted the slider into right field and just tried to keep things going, put pressure on him.”
Freeman explained that his aggressive baserunning wasn’t impulsive—it was calculated. “He was going to the line, and I thought he’d have to spin to throw to second. I didn’t hit it as hard, so I pushed the envelope. We hadn’t had anything going since the first inning,” he said. The risk paid off. The Dodgers chained together clutch RBIs Kiké Hernandez, Will Smith and Shohei Ohtani. “A lot of good things happened that inning,” Freeman said.
Then came the ninth. Philadelphia threatened, and Freeman had to turn acrobat. “Tommy threw one into the dirt,” he recalled. “Thankfully I was able to catch it and stay on the base. I told Lauren [Shehadi of TBS] after the game my gray [hair] was right here—it might be up to my sideburn now. That was a stressful ending.”
He also made sure no one forgot the “wheel play” that came moments earlier on a bunt. “That’s something you do in spring training that never shows up again,” he said. “It was picture-perfect by Max and Mookie. We were talking about it during the pitching change—if he bunts to third, Max throws to Mookie, Tommy’s going to first, I sprint to second. We wanted every base covered.”
As for Mookie Betts handling the toughest play of the night at shortstop, Freeman couldn’t say enough. “Hopefully everyone realizes how hard it is to switch positions and do it at an elite level like Mookie has,” he said. “That was the perfect time to use that wheel play. Everything was just perfect on that play.”
Asked about the team’s mindset after stealing two on the road, Freeman smiled. “Kiké looked over at me and said, ‘We just took two here.’ This is a hard place to play—an incredible fan base, it’s loud. We came here hoping to get one, and when we got the first, we went all in on the second. We’ve put ourselves in a great position going into Wednesday.”
He credited the pitching staff for setting the tone. “They were countering each zero,” he said. “That’s what you’ve got to do in the playoffs—match zeros until you can scratch one across. To get two in this environment is massive.”
Freeman also had praise for Roki Sasaki, who handled the pressure cooker of the ninth. “That’s the most pressure situation you can be in—first and third, two outs, bottom of the ninth, on the road,” Freeman said. “He was calm, collected. The first-pitch splitter told you that. He looks so good now—so confident. He knew he was going to get it done. That’s a massive weapon for us this postseason.”
The Dodgers leave Philadelphia up 2-0, thanks in large part to their steady first baseman—one double, one scoop, and a whole lot of gray hairs earned in the City of Brotherly Love.
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