Freddie Freeman’s Message After Another Nail-Biter Says Plenty About These Dodgers

The Los Angeles Dodgers just became the first team in baseball to hit 50 wins this season. And they did it the hard way, again.

A day after getting absolutely gutted by the Orioles in a 12-1 loss that looked like a surrender, the Dodgers were flat for most of Tuesday night against the Minnesota Twins. The pitching was fine. The offense? Not so much. Guys kept getting on base but they couldn’t buy a timely hit. That is until Freddie Freeman stepped in during the sixth inning and parked a solo shot to put Los Angeles up 2-1. That was the ballgame.

It was the kind of win that feels more like surviving than dominating. The Dodgers stranded runners all over the place. The game should have been a blowout but instead it was a tightrope walk. That is apparently exactly how Freeman likes it.

“Good teams win close ball games,” Freeman said after the game. “We’ll get it going. It’s the middle of the year, we’ll be fine.”

50 wins in June sounds nice but this team has real issues

Nobody is going to feel bad for a team with 50 wins. But the Dodgers have been held together with tape and hope for the last month. Their starting rotation has been decimated by injuries. Key bats have gone cold at the worst times. The bullpen has been a recurring nightmare. That 12-1 loss to Baltimore wasn’t an anomaly, it was a symptom.

Still, betting against this group right now feels stupid. They are the defending champs and they look like the team most likely to hoist the trophy again. If they pull it off, they would join the New York Yankees as the only franchises to win three straight World Series titles. That is franchise-altering stuff.

For Freeman personally, another ring would be the capstone on a legacy that is already carved into Dodgers history. His postseason hitting has been supernatural. The guy seems to get bigger the more pressure gets applied.

But none of that matters in June. What matters is the Dodgers keep finding ways to win ugly. And Freeman keeps reminding everyone that ugly wins still count exactly the same as pretty ones.

Freeman finished the night 1-for-4 with that home run, an RBI and two strikeouts. Not a stat line that jumps off the page. But that one swing was enough.