There’s a reason why infielder Alex Freeland is the No. 3 prospect in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization and the No. 42 prospect in all of baseball.
Freeland does everything on a baseball field well. He does not have a single below-average tool on the scouting 20-80 scale. In the minor leagues, Freeland’s ability to get on base paired with his elite defense and gap-to-gap power earned him an opportunity in Major League Baseball.
In 94 games at Triple-A this season, Freeland walked 75 times and hit 26 doubles. The Dodgers were smart to give him a chance, but his first month in the big leagues hasn’t gone as well as everyone hoped.
Freeland is hitting just .198 in 81 at-bats with the Dodgers this season. While his on-base percentage is still over .300, Freeland is still leaving a lot to be desired offensively. His OPS is .622 due to the low batting average and him only having five extra-base hits. Thanks to his defense on the infield, Freeland is still better than a replacement level player, with 0.3 fWAR on the season.
With a little development and a full season of playing time, there’s a reason to believe Freeland can be a quality regular at the big league level. But when it comes to playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers, he needs to be more than that.
Freeland needs to prove he’s not Gavin Lux 2.0 with Dodgers
Gavin Lux is a great example of this. Lux was a starter for the Dodgers in 2022 in 2024. He missed the entire 2023 season with an injury.
Lux was never a bad Dodger. In fact, his OPS was above .700 and his OPS+ was right at or above 100 in both of his seasons as a starter. He totaled 4.1 fWAR in those two seasons combined.
That being said, the standard in Los Angeles is higher. Being league average or a quality regular isn’t good enough to earn guaranteed playing time. The Dodgers are an organization that is always looking to upgrade, and they did so in the offseason.
The addition of Hyeseong Kim allowed Los Angeles to move on from Gavin Lux in a trade, shipping him to the Cincinnati Reds.
Lux has been fine with Cincinnati. He’s batting .274 with a 100 OPS+ and 0.4 fWAR, but the Dodgers aren’t really missing anything having traded him.
As the 2025 regular season winds down in September, Alex Freeland needs to prove that he’s more than an average infielder like Lux. That might be harsh for a rookie, but Freeland is already 24 years old and the Dodgers demand excellence.
He needs to find more of those extra-base hits that he had in Triple-A. The offense simply needs to improve. If not, the Dodgers will have no choice but to view Freeland as a plus defender, and slightly below average bat that can be replaced at the first opportunity in any offseason.
It’s a big month for the rookie to prove he belongs in Los Angeles.
