Dodgers’ Newest Top-100 Prospect Turns Heads With Mammoth Home Run

With his first at-bat on Tuesday night for Triple-A Oklahoma City against Las Vegas, Alex Freeland unleashed a monster.

It was Freeland’s first Triple-A home run and 14th overall home run this season. The home run traveled an estimated 462 feet, per Statcast — the longest home run hit by an Oklahoma City player this season.

Freeland finished the game 2-for-6 with two runs scored.

The young shortstop was promoted to Triple-A just recently, after the Los Angeles Dodgers traded Trey Sweeney to the Detroit Tigers in a package that brought starting pitcher Jack Flaherty to Los Angeles.

Before his promotion, Freeland spent the entire season with Double-A Tulsa, where he had a .245 batting average with 11 home runs, 35 runs batted in, 59 runs scored, and 24 stolen bases over 74 games with the Drillers this season.

Freeland has one of the more unique stories and paths to this point in his career.

In a story written by Zach Buchanan back in June 2023 for The Athletic, it was revealed that Freeland was born with a clubfoot — a deformity in which one or both feet are twisted out of position.

As it turns out, his right foot was deformed at birth and he spent his entire first year undergoing operations to correct it.

“As an infant, he was put in tiny casts that he kept kicking off,” Buchanan wrote. “At four months, he underwent surgery to lengthen his tendons. Three months after that came what his father calls a full foot reconstruction. Freeland learned to walk with a cast all the way up to his hip, a developmental hurdle that has left him with a slightly stilted gait.”

The struggles he endured as an infant set him up for where is now: one step away from the major leagues.

“You’d never know watching him play the field,” says one scout who saw Freeland last year, via Buchanan. “His timing is uncanny.”

Freeland has never let his past define him. He’s determined to make it to the big leagues on his own merit. The Dodgers noticed it but it didn’t matter to them. They think he will hit and stick in the middle infield.

“I’m just another kid playing the game of baseball,” Freeland says. “If I suck, tell me I suck. Don’t blame it on my foot.”

Photo Credit: Bryan Terry/The Oklahoman/USA Today Network

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