Dodgers get positive Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman updates

CINCINNATI — For the first time in what’s felt like a while, the Dodgers’ usually foreboding daily injury updates came with some needed signs of optimism on Tuesday. 

Before the game, manager Dave Roberts said two-way star Shohei Ohtani “felt good” after resuming hitting activities on Monday, when he took swings off a tee back in Los Angeles. And while Roberts didn’t guarantee Ohtani would return from the injured list before the end of the regular season, that at least remains the team’s expectation for now.

“Today was positive,” Roberts said, “and hopefully we can just keep building towards that.”

Then, in an even bigger development, first baseman Freddie Freeman not only returned to the lineup in Tuesday night’s win over the Cincinnati Reds, but put together a three-hit performance that “played myself in” to Wednesday’s lineup, he proudly noted with a grin.

Initially, Roberts was planning to rest Freeman on Wednesday amid his ongoing battle with a right knee injury. That would have marked the 37-year-old’s fourth missed game out of the last seven for the team.

Early in the night, however, Freeman struck a deal with his manager.

“He was joking, saying, ‘If I get three hits, then can I be in there tomorrow?’” Roberts recounted. 

Right on cue, Freeman lined singles in the first, fifth and seventh innings — snapping out of his troubling 3-for-30 slump previously.

“It looked good,” Roberts said. “It looked more like Freddie.”

Not only did the veteran slugger feel no pain in his knee — where he has been battling a patellar tendinitis problem — but he also revealed a fruitful adjustment he had made before the game with his swing.

Amid his recent knee problems, Freeman felt he had started letting the ball travel too far in his stance before beginning his swing, causing him to “slide” in the box, especially with a compromised front leg.

Thus, he made a temporary change he hopes will spark him ahead of the playoffs, focusing on getting his front leg down sooner and catching the ball further out at the front of his swing.

“I feel like my faults are I try to hit the ball to the opposite field too much, and I let the ball get too deep,” he said. “So today was [get the] foot down early, catch the ball out front a little bit, and it kind of worked. I wasn’t squaring the ball up in the game, but I’ll take those three hits and keep that work going tomorrow, and hopefully we’ll get hot.”

It’s not a permanent solution, Freeman noted. But at this point in the year, “I’m not trying to find something that’s sustainable,” he said. “I’m trying to find something that works for four weeks.” 

Indeed, between that and Ohtani’s progress — which has the Dodgers remaining cautiously optimistic about his chances to make an impact in the playoffs — it was enough for the team to finally feel some optimism about the way they are trending toward October, getting a couple of positive updates on two of their superstar hitters.

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