Sports
How Freddie Freeman — now back on a hitting streak — worked through early-season slump
On the surface, it might not have looked like much of a slump.
To star Dodgers slugger Freddie Freeman, however, his performance through much of April was certainly starting to feel like one.
Entering play Monday, Freeman was batting .306 with eight doubles, two home runs and 19 RBIs. He had a .861 on-base-plus-slugging percentage and 142 OPS+ (meaning, essentially, he has been 42% more productive than the average MLB hitter).
Those were drops from his first two seasons in L.A., in which he finished top-five in MVP voting both times.
But a slump? Really?
“I take pride in being consistent,” Freeman said. “And I’m not being consistent right now.”
That, at least, was what Freeman was feeling two weeks ago, in the midst of an eight-for-47 stretch that dropped his batting average to .259.
“I’m not hitting the pitches I’d normally hit,” Freeman said then. “There’s a lot going on up there. Trying to figure it out.”
There are points in every season where Freeman cools off, and his precise swing mechanics get out of whack. Almost always, it’s because his hips rotate too open, and his bat cuts short and across the strike zone — not square and straight through it.
The result: Freeman will stop hitting fastballs for opposite-field line drives, or barrel up breaking pitches into the right-center field gap. Instead, he will hit lazy pop-flys, or yank a ground ball to the pull side, or simply foul off mistake pitches he’d typically clobber.
“I’m not swinging at bad pitches,” Freeman said, at the height of his early-season struggles. “I’m just not hitting them where they should be going.”
The fix: A curated routine of slump-busting pregame techniques; especially a signature “net drill” in which Freeman will set up about an arm’s distance from a batting screen, then try to execute a swing without brushing the barrel against, hoping to recalibrate the inside-out bat path that has long been key to his career .301 batting average.
“I usually only bring it out 5-10 times per year,” Freeman said of the drill, which he has been doing since he was a kid. “That’s usually when things are really off.”
This year, Freeman dusted it off early, one of several notable alterations he has made to his meticulous pregame process.
In recent weeks, the 34-year-old has also started taking almost daily rounds of outdoor batting practice, a rarity during his first two years with the Dodgers (he typically prefers to hit in the clubhouse batting cages).
Overall, he has increased his total amount of pregame swings three-fold, he said, “just to hurry this [process] up.”
Lately, at last, better results have started to follow.
Freeman entered Monday on an eight-game hitting streak, going 12 for his last 27 with 11 RBIs and more extra-base hits (five) than strikeouts (four).
Half of those games have been multi-hits efforts. And in all but one, he has recorded a hit either up the middle or the other way — a telltale sign of synced-up mechanics in his swing.
“Everything’s kind of been working,” Freeman said. “Just been kind of doing really really slow, soft swings in BP, and then let the adrenaline of the game take the swing a little bit harder. Things the last week have been a lot better.”
It’s a welcome sight for the Dodgers, who haven’t often seen their $162 million first baseman struggle since arriving in March 2022.
“He’s gonna come out of it,” manager Dave Roberts said this weekend. “But there’s some sadness when he’s in a dark place.”
Phrases like “sadness” and “dark place” might not square with Freeman’s actual numbers.
Even at his recent low point, when a three-game hitting drought culminated with a three-strikeout performance on April 19, Freeman’s production was still comfortably above league average.
Even as he battled inconsistency at the plate, he still wore a perpetual smile, joking around with coaches and teammates.
“Sometimes players are in a dark spot and they really feel it and mean it,” Roberts said. “But Freddie knows he’s a great hitter … So I think he has some levity with it.”
Indeed, when asked last week if he was being superstitious by changing his hitting routine, Freeman referenced a line from Steve Carell’s character in “The Office,” Michael Scott.
“Just a little stitious,” he responded.
When told, jokingly, this weekend, he must be the worst .300 hitter in baseball, Freeman chuckled and shrugged.
“Feels like it,” he said.
Still, the reason this slump felt different, why the frustration was boiling much closer to the surface, is because it came on the heels of similar struggles last fall.
At the end of the 2023 regular season, Freeman batted just .262 over his final 17 games (a notable drop from his .339 average before then). Then, in the Dodgers’ postseason sweep to the Arizona Diamondbacks, his swing seemed completely off, resulting in a one-for-10 mark that loomed large in the Dodgers’ early elimination.
“That’s why there has been so much frustration,” Freeman said earlier this month. “Because I know what I’m doing wrong. It’s over-rotation with my hips, which causes [other issues]. It’s the same thing every time. But for some reason, I’ve gone through everything about 20 times already and it hasn’t clicked yet. So that’s why, here I am, hitting outside, doing little things differently, [trying to] smile through it.”
Finally, over the last week, it seems like the tide has started to turn.
In addition to his eight-game hitting streak, Freeman snapped another kind of drought on Sunday, hammering his first home run since the Dodgers’ home opener exactly a month earlier.
“No,” Freeman said when asked if he was worried about adding to his home run total, after it’d been stuck at one for 26 games. “If you’re just going for power when you don’t have a good swing already, it’s just never going to happen.”
But now, thanks to a laborious swing progression and trust in his hitting process, the moment offered the latest sign of Freeman’s continued turnaround; that an elongated (for him, at least) slump to start the season finally appears to be largely done.
“There’s still bad swings in there,” Freeman said, “but ultimately there have been a lot more good swings lately.”
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On paper, Netflix had great divisional matchups on Christmas Day for Week 17 when the season began.
Of course, the NFL season never goes as planned, and the three matchups scheduled for the holiday are not what anyone had planned.
The reason? Star quarterbacks won’t be playing in each game.
Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott walks off the field after the team’s NFL football game against the Baltimore Ravens in Arlington, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeffrey McWhorter)
Christmas Day’s first kickoff will be an NFC East battle between the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Commanders, with both teams already eliminated from playoff contention.
And while Dak Prescott and company are looking to finish the season strong, the Commanders shut down Jayden Daniels, their second-year quarterback who led them to the NFC Championship Game in his rookie season just a year ago, after reaggravating his elbow injury.
In fact, the Commanders won’t even see Marcus Mariota, Daniels’ backup who has had to start eight games this season, as he’s dealing with an injury as well. It will be veteran Josh Johnson making the start in Landover, Maryland, on Christmas Day for a 4-11 Commanders squad that hoped to at least make the playoffs after a fantastic finish in 2024.
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“When you do circle those matchups, that’s exactly what you’re thinking: This is going to be cool. How it’s all laid out — division games right here at the end between two games of Philadelphia with a Dallas game in between,” Commanders head coach Dan Quinn said.
“Playing these division games, they still mean a lot.”
Unfortunately for both squads, it will only be for bragging rights.
Jayden Daniels of the Washington Commanders looks on from the sidelines after leaving the game during the second half against the Minnesota Vikings at U.S. Bank Stadium on Dec. 7, 2025 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Ellen Schmidt/Getty Images)
In the 4:30 p.m. ET slate, the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings, a storied NFC North rivalry, the home team in Minneapolis will be without its own second-year signal caller — J.J. McCarthy.
McCarthy suffered an injury in the win over the New York Giants last week, and it will be Max Brosmer having to start again for Kevin O’Connell’s group.
The Minnesota product’s first career start didn’t work out too well in Seattle, as the Seahawks had their way on defense against Brosmer. Perhaps a home crowd will do him and the Vikings’ offense better, but the Lions at least still have something to play for.
Detroit heads into this game following a tough loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, where a game-winning touchdown was called back after Amon-Ra St. Brown was penalized for offensive pass interference, negating Jared Goff flying into the end zone after a pitch-back from the star receiver.
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes chews his mouth guard during warmups before an NFL football game against the Denver Broncos, Sunday, Nov. 10, 2024 in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Reed Hoffmann, File)
The Lions need to win their remaining two games, while also needing the Green Bay Packers to lose their last two games to secure the final NFC wild card spot.
Finally, and perhaps the biggest disappointment for Netflix, is the Kansas City Chiefs not having Patrick Mahomes on the field this holiday season.
Mahomes suffered a torn ACL, which he quickly had surgery to repair, following a loss that knocked them out of playoff contention two weeks ago. The Chiefs were hoping that his backup, Gardner Minshew, could finish out the season, but he tore his ACL last week in a loss to the Tennessee Titans.
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That leaves USF alum Chris Oladokun, who filled in for Minshew last week, starting against Bo Nix and the Denver Broncos — a 12-3 squad who already clinched their playoff berth. Denver will still be playing hard, as they’re competing for the No. 1 overall seed in the AFC, which would ensure home games throughout the playoffs.
These games were supposed to be potential division/playoff clinching matchups, but the NFL and its fanbase will be hoping these games are not as lopsided as some believe they could turn out to be.
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People place bets at Santa Anita Park, where purses have declined along with the number of horses racing and lack of money coming from off-site betting.
(Getty Images)
Figuring out the purse for 34 of the 35 graded stakes races at Santa Anita is, for horsemen anyway, maddeningly simple: Just look up the minimum purse required in North America.
For a Grade 1 race, that’s $300,000. It drops to $200,000 for Grade 2 races and $100,000 for Grade 3s.
Even the one local exception, the Santa Anita Derby, pays “only” $500,000 after offering $750,000 from 2021-24. The current amount is half the purse on offer for the top 3-year-old races at Gulfstream Park (Florida Derby) and Fair Grounds (Louisiana Derby), and just one-third what Oaklawn Park pays for the Arkansas Derby.
Last year the Santa Anita Derby attracted only five entries, which reduced the number of Kentucky Derby qualifying points available in the race. That almost kept Baeza, who finished second to Journalism in the Arcadia race, from qualifying for the Derby (he made it in the field only after another horse was scratched and wound up placing third).
It’s the same story for older horses, where Gulfstream offers the $3-million Pegasus World Cup next month plus turf races for $1 million and $500,000. Oaklawn Park has a half-dozen races worth at least $500,000 (two at $1.25 million), and Fair Grounds has three between $250,000 and $500,000. No Grade 3 race at any of those tracks offers less than $150,000.
All of that makes it harder for Santa Anita to attract top horses from those states, which increase purses with money from slot machines or casinos, something not available to California tracks. Santa Anita, however, has hiked its purses this meeting for maiden and allowance races.
Sports
Lions star Amon-Ra St Brown explains why he isn’t fan of playing on Christmas: ‘Don’t even like it’
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While football fans may enjoy some NFL football on Christmas Day, not all players share the same thoughts.
Detroit Lions star receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown revealed on his “St. Brown Podcast” with his older brother, Equanimeous, that he isn’t a fan of having to work on the holidays.
The Lions, who play yearly on Thanksgiving Day, will play at U.S. Bank Stadium against the Minnesota Vikings on Christmas.
Detroit Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown (14) warms up ahead of the Washington Commanders game at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md., Nov. 9, 2025. (Junfu Han/USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
“The two biggest holidays I feel like in the United States, we played on both of them.” Amon-Ra told his brother.
“And I don’t even have kids yet. If I had kids, I’d be even more pissed. Like, you can’t be spending it with your family, get to see your kids open gifts. I feel like that’s something that a lot of parents love to see and can’t wait for.
“I don’t even like it, and I’m not even a f—ing father yet.”
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Playing for the Lions means Thanksgiving Day will always involve football, and Amon-Ra signed a four-year, $120 million extension last year. So, he understands Thanksgiving means work first before the feast.
But, as he said, both major holidays can be tough, especially for those fathers who want to be around their children and families.
It’s an added nuisance for Amon-Ra that the Lions also have to travel for the game.
Detroit Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown celebrates after scoring during the first half against the Washington Commanders Nov. 9, 2025, in Landover, Md. (Stephanie Scarbrough/AP Photo)
“Us traveling, it’s like, damn,” he told his brother.
Amon-Ra is also dealing with a knee injury following the team’s tough loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers Sunday. He was officially listed as questionable for the game, though he’s expected to play barring any pregame setback.
The Lions find themselves in a must-win situation in Week 17 if they want to make the playoffs. While Detroit needs to win their final two games, they also need the Green Bay Packers, their NFC North rivals, to lose their final two games to reach the playoffs.
The situation would’ve been different if the Lions hadn’t had Amon-Ra’s touchdown with 22 seconds left at Ford Field Sunday called back for offensive pass interference.
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A few plays later, Amon-Ra was called for offensive pass interference on the final play of the game, when he was able to pitch it back to quarterback Jared Goff, who flew into the end zone for what Lions fans hoped was the game-winning score. Instead, the flag negated the touchdown and the game ended.
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