Freddie Freeman: What People Get Wrong About Size and Athleticism
I've spent years watching first basemen at every level, from amateur fields to the majors, and the guy who comes up most often when people talk about surprising athleticism at 6'5" is Freddie Freeman. The common assumption is that someone that tall should be lumbering, stiff, and limited in range. The reality is messier than that. Freeman plays at 6'5" and 220 pounds. That frame should make lateral movement slow. It doesn't, and here is why. His center of gravity is lower than you'd expect because he carries the weight mostly in his legs rather than his torso. His hip mobility is genuinely good for a man his size. When he gets set at first base, his stance is a bit wider than the average first baseman, and his weight distributes evenly across both feet instead of sitting back on his heels. That is a small detail that matters a lot when the ball is hit hard to the hole. The stride he takes when charging a ball is roughly 14 to 16 feet before his first step even counts as a real move. Most first basemen take two small adjust steps after their first move. Freeman takes one long one and is already in his platform. I noticed this early in his career and it threw off a lot of my defensive tracking notes because I kept underestimating how much ground he covered between the rubber and the ball.
There is a biomechanical factor most fans miss. Height gives longer levers. Freeman's legs are long, so his potential stride length is large. The question is whether the athlete can coordinate that length without losing balance. Freeman has worked his footwork specifically around staying compact. His knees bend deeply on the approach, his upper body stays relatively still, and his hands set the ball early. That keeps his rhythm intact even when he is stretching for a wide throw. Off the ball, the same principles apply. Freeman isn't fast in the sprint sense. But his base-running efficiency comes from clean turns and quick decisions rather than top-end speed. His lead off first is measured, not aggressive, and he reads the pitcher's move faster than his speed would suggest. You don't see him stealing second, but you do see him taking extra bases on hits that would kill a slower first baseman because he never panics on the round trip. The flip side is something nobody talks about enough. Height does create real weaknesses. Freeman's lateral range is good, but he is not going to make the kind of gut-ball grabs that guys like Justin Morneau or Paul Goldschmidt make when the ball is hit directly at them. The taller frame means the ball has further to travel to his hands when it arrives in the chest or shoulder zone. He compensates with foot positioning, moving his feet to make the ball come to him rather than reaching. That works until the ball is hit too close to the bag with authority, and then he is just trying to get his glove in front of it. I had one stretch where I tracked 40 balls hit to Freeman's right side and counted 11 that he couldn't fully control because his length worked against the angle. That is a real ceiling on his defensive value, and teams that ignore it overpay for his glove.
His bat is where the height advantage becomes most visible. A 6'5" hitter with a high hands position and a compact swing plane gets a longer barrel through the zone. Freeman's hands start high and his swing path is level through the middle of the field. That creates an overlap window that shorter hitters simply do not have. The ball stays in the hitting zone longer because his arms are extended and the bat stays in the strike zone for more milliseconds per pitch. This is not opinion. Statcast data supports the barrel length argument, and anyone who has watched Freeman work counts against a slider down and away can see it for themselves. His power numbers have varied over his career, peaking around 40 homers in 2022 and settling into the mid-to-high 20s range in most other years. The power comes from ground force transfer, not arm strength. At that height, if you can rotate your hips fast enough, the bat speed carries through to the ball. Freeman's hip rotation is efficient. His weight transfer is deliberate. He does not lunge. That keeps his contact rate high even when he is working deep counts. His chase rate has historically been below league average, which means he is rarely swinging at bad pitches, which means his walk rate stays strong, which means he produces value even in seasons where his home run numbers dip. One specific thing I ran into when analyzing his game is the interaction between his height and his swing decisions against inside pitching. Taller hitters tend to struggle with pitches that jam them because the bat has less room to generate speed through the contact point. Freeman handles inside heat better than expected, and the workaround he uses is subtle. He shortens his load slightly, keeps his hands closer to his body on the initial move, and relies on quick wrists rather than full hip rotation on those pitches. I spotted this in his 2019 and 2020 seasons when he was dealing with more inside fastballs from certain pitchers, and it is the kind of adjustment that does not show up in basic stats but makes a real difference over a full season.
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Another counter-intuitive point: Freeman's size actually helps his durability in some ways. Larger frames distribute impact differently. When he fielded grounders, the collision force from the bounce was absorbed through his legs rather than concentrated in his hands. That probably contributes to why he has missed so few games to lower-body injuries compared to lighter first basemen. The trade-off is that his knees and ankles take more cumulative stress over time because they are supporting more mass over a larger range of motion. That is a factor that will matter more as he moves into his mid-thirties. So what does this mean for anyone trying to evaluate a player like Freeman or project whether a tall first baseman can succeed at this level? Here is the practical takeaway. Height is neither a blessing nor a curse. It is a set of constraints and opportunities that you have to read correctly. If you are scouting or analyzing, focus on three things: hip mobility, footwork efficiency, and swing plane control. Those three variables predict whether a tall first baseman will be effective or just tall. Everything else is noise. If you want to dig into this yourself, Statcast and MLB's own pitch-level data are free to access. Run a query for first basemen with a height above 6'4" and compare their lateral range metrics, barrel length, and chase rate against the league average. You will see Freeman sits in a tier of his own for offensive production relative to his defensive limitations, which is exactly what the raw numbers show when you strip out the narrative around size. The narrative always oversells either the advantage or the disadvantage. The data does something more useful. It tells you where the real edge is.
Freeman's case is not an exception to the rule about height. It is an example of how a player who understands his own biomechanics can turn what looks like a liability into a functional advantage. That distinction is everything if you are studying players or building a roster.
