Atlanta Braves Freddie Freeman Sees a Breakout Season Ahead

By David Miller
Freddie Freeman Atlanta Braves
Howard Smith-USA TODAY Sports

Freddie Freeman is the young first baseman of the Atlanta Braves. His name has been mentioned along with Jason Heyward as the players that will carry the Braves franchise into the future. Last season appeared to possibly be a breakout campaign for Freeman early on. With a .298 average, six homers and a .864 OPS, things appeared to be heading in the right direction. Then everything went wrong.

The biggest problem for Freeman has been his eyesight. It really went fuzzy on him last year when he could find no contact lens that would help his blurry vision. If you have ever stood in the batter’s box, even in a public batting cage, and watched an 80 or 90 mile-per-hour pitch zoom by, you know what kind of a problem blurry vision would be. Quite simply, Freeman could not clearly see the ball for most of last season.

As if that weren’t enough, an issue with his index finger wouldn’t allow him to squeeze the bat correctly for most of the season either. Here is a left-handed power hitter that cannot see correctly and cannot hold the bat correctly. You can imagine that he probably had a pretty down year from then on. Well, his power totals with these issues were 23 homers and 94 runs batted in. I’m not a psychic nor do I pretend to be. When I call for a breakout season for Freeman, it’s this year he is going to be able to hold that bat and see the ball. Common sense takes you the rest of the way. It could be a monster year for Freeman if he stays healthy.

David Miller is a Senior Writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @davidmillerrant, “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google+.

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