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ATLANTA – Every great player deserves a signature moment, where the sum of his success can be captured in a strong moment. A large memory as a proxy for a thousand smaller ones. Up to match 3 of the National League division series Sunday night, Freddie Freeman, three-time All-Star and career pitcher of .293, and one of the most underrated professional hitters of the game, had not lived such a moment.
He did, of course, get to the first pitch he saw from left-handed Alex Wood of the Dodgers in the sixth inning, with tension and nerves as dense as moisture in August. The Braves had dug the gap with a five-point lead. This ball-hunting scene ended with a victory for the Braves 6 to 5, who, because of circumstances that only became public in the post-game clubhouse, was far more dangerous than they had ever been. the air at home.
Freeman is the king of the ambush. Since 2011, it has 289 positive results on the first shots. Only José Altuve has more. Major league strikers beat .39 against first throws. Nice, but Freeman hits on them an absurd .412. Everyone knows it and Freeman always destroys the first shots.
"He can still ambush," said Braves receiver Kurt Suzuki, "because he's number one, he has amazing hand-eye coordination, and number two, he's just ambushing." in the strike zone. He is not swinging wildly.
Freeman is also very intelligent. As he was about to hit Wood, he returned to play 1. Wood hit him on a brittle 1-2 ball, a curve at 82 mph to a knuckle that looks like a slider.
Freeman thought, "It's a draw. Sixth inning. At this point, it will go straight to the point. "
So Freeman sat on the ball that broke Wood. Now you have to understand how difficult it is for a batter to sit on a ball that breaks at the first step, but also to connect to it solidly. The pitchers launched 50,113 brittle balls on the first throws this year. Only 182 were reached for home tours, four tenths of one percent.
Wood launched his pitch, just as Freeman deduced. And Freeman killed him. Kill him so badly that right-handed Yasiel Puig bowed his head and did not bother to take a step.
While Freeman revolved around the basics, you realized that nobody deserved this moment in this arena as much as Freeman. His time with the Braves goes back to Bobby Cox and the 2010 Braves. He is the only remaining player of their last playoff team in 2013. He then had four losing seasons, including 95, 93 and 90 losses in the last three years. The Sunday night game was the first playoff game at the team's two-year stadium, SunTrust Park, leaving Marlins Park in Miami as the only one of the 30 current parks to have never played a playoff game.
As the LED lights flashed above him and the crowd stood up and cheered, with breathlessness after losing five points, Freeman floated around the bases in a nine-year-long circuit.
As he was coming off the field, Freeman joked, "I have the impression of being a hundred years old tonight."
It's hard to find another baseball player as admired and respected as Freeman, especially in his own club.
"His behavior," said Charlie Culberson, stopping short, at the question of Freeman's most impressive feature. "It's just the way he looks after his things. If he succeeds, he simply acts as if he knew that he is supposed to do well. I feel that he takes everything in stride. "
What turned out to be a house spared by Freeman would not have mattered if it was not for the invisible folly of the ninth round. Arodys Vizcaino, closer, put the leagues equal and assists on the base, without outs. It was then that Suzuki went to the mound to tell him about the sequence of signs and how to pitch to Max Muncy, the next hitter. The throws coach, Chuck Hernandez, is joined to them. Let's say on the record that this was the first post-season game of all time in which one team used all of its allowed mounds visits – with up to six players per team used this season for the first time.
Vizcaino fell behind Muncy 3 to 0 before resuming to shoot him. Then Vizcaino blew Manny Machado, but on a whirling slider that went through Suzuki, who was expecting a fastball. The ground slid to the stop, sending the two candidates on a base. The next hitter was Brian Dozier.
"The time has come," said Suzuki at the marble umpire, Gary Cederstrom, as he approached the mound to talk to Vizcaino about signs and how to launch Dozier.
"No, no," said Cederstrom, raising his arm to stop him. "You can not go out. You do not have mound tours. "
The rule states that any mooring visit beyond six hours requires replacement of the pitcher. (Brad Brach threw the pen.) But the referees are instructed to do what Cederstrom, the crew commander, did: avoid an involuntary throw change by simply preventing the receiver from going out.
Now, Suzuki was in a bind. The draw was at third base. Vizcaino had thrown a wild throw by crossing it. Suzuki could not make sure they were on the same page regarding the order of the panels and they could not discuss how to launch at Dozier.
"Holy cow," says Suzuki. "Talk about the pressure."
He tried to shout at Vizcaino, "but my spanish is not very good."
He tried makeshift signals with his hands to let him know the sequence of signs that they were using. On the bench, the Braves receiver, Tyler Flowers, tried to help his own signal to tell Suzuki how to call.
Suzuki then signaled and hoped that Vizcaino, who throws a fastball at 98 mph and a slider at 86 mph, did not kill him by throwing something different from what he had expected. And it all happened after more than three and a half hours of pressurized baseball and Suzuki, who captured 193 yards from seven different pitchers.
"A lot of possibilities, a lot of terrain and a lot of plastic cards," said Suzuki, referring to the reports of mini-screens that crept into his armband.
Vizcaino started with a fastball for a goal called – which would prove to be the best pitch that Dozier would see. He threw one bad designer out of two and Dozier missed his chance. At 0-2, Vizcaino threw a fastball from the plate for a ball. Until now, everything is fine between the launcher and the receiver.
On the next field, Suzuki called a slider. He hoped that Vizcaino would have received the signal. If Vizcaino threw another fastball at 97 while Suzuki was expecting a slider at 86, there is no way for Suzuki to catch him. Even a strike – like what happened with Machado – would have been a fool, sending the ball tied.
Vizcaino thought the same thing as Suzuki. Dozier is an excellent fast hitter. The 0-2 fastball was an installation field, a show ball designed to run it or to set up the next throw. Vizcaino could launch his slider in the same plane as the fastball that he just pitched, starting only over the plate. Dozier would engage to swing, but the ball would fall into the ground and take a fraction of a second longer to get there.
This is exactly what happened. Pitcher and receiver thought the same. Dozier swayed and missed. The Braves have lived to play another day, which almost never happens here in recent years.
Atlanta has lost five consecutive games in potential elimination. Freeman had been 0-3 in both winning and winning games. That night, his night, he would not let that happen again.
"He is our guy," said Suzuki. "I hate to say that, but you just expect it from him. He does it all the time. We now have a little momentum. We have a next day now. "
We will remember the game for what was seen and what was invisible. The Freeman home run is a highlight for the franchise, regardless of the evolution of this series. His franchise player christened the stadium with his first playoff victory. He may have launched an era here, given the young talent of this team, among so many others.
What could be a more entertaining day is that Vizcaino and Suzuki sailed in the ninth inning, as if we were driving a boat at night in rough seas without her controls. In one way or another, they managed to get to a safe place.
"I'm fried right now," said Suzuki. "Fried."
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