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Freddie Freeman is feeling fine after a scary moment last week in Kansas City. During the Dodgers’ series sweep of the Royals, Freeman went face-first into the visitors’ dugout while chasing a pop-up, per staff reporting at DodgerBlue. Miguel Rojas rushed down the dugout steps to check on him, and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts along with a trainer sprinted over immediately. Freeman dealt with body soreness afterward but has since recovered fully.

If you watched it live, you held your breath. Freeman is 36 years old and plays every single day. He’s the kind of player who will throw his body wherever the ball is — that’s just how he’s wired — but seeing him disappear over that railing was genuinely unnerving. The good news is that the soreness was just that: soreness. No structural issue, no time missed. He was back in the lineup on August 17, business as usual.

Freeman’s durability has been one of the defining features of his career. He played 159 games during his MVP season with Atlanta in 2020, gutted through a bad elbow in the 2021 postseason, and has been a near-everyday presence since arriving in Los Angeles. This season he’s continued to anchor the lineup at first base, providing the steady left-handed bat and veteran presence that keeps our lineup balanced. Losing him for any stretch — especially now, as we push through August — would have been a significant blow.

Rojas deserves a quick mention here too. He was the first one down those steps, which tells you something about the clubhouse. Rojas has been a glue guy for this roster, filling in wherever needed across the infield while being the kind of teammate who’s always aware of what’s happening around him. That instinct to immediately check on Freeman speaks to the culture in that room.

For the Dodgers, this is simply good news with no asterisk attached. Freeman is healthy, he’s playing, and the team avoided what could have been a brutal injury at the worst possible time. We’re in the thick of the stretch run, and having our first baseman go down chasing a foul ball into a dugout would have been a gut punch. Instead, it’s a footnote from a sweep. I’ll take that outcome every time.

Source(s): Staff (DodgerBlue) | First reported: August 18, 2026 2:14 PM UTC

God Bless and Go Dodgers