FREEMAN SET TO BEGIN TRIPLE-A REHAB SATURDAY

Pre-return agenda includes practice for switch to third base.

SAN DIEGO — Freddie Freeman took live batting practice Wednesday, just six weeks after fracturing his left wrist, and is aiming to begin a rehabilitation assignment Saturday with Triple-A Gwinnett at Charlotte with hopes of rejoining the Braves next week.

If all goes as planned, he said he would join the Braves in Washington for a four-games series against the Nationals that starts July 6, seven weeks and one day after his injury and three weeks ahead of the original timetable for his return.

“Saturday game, then be off Sunday, play Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday,” Freeman said of his planned rehab schedule with Gwinnett. “Then if I feel I can hit (Max) Scherzer’s heater, or whoever’s, then I’ll say I’m ready to roll and meet the team in D.C.”

And, yes, he plans to rejoin them as a third baseman, having made the decision, after consultation with the Braves, to move across the diamond from first base to keep his hot-hitting replacement, Matt Adams, in the lineup.

Freeman has spent a lot of time in the past week taking ground balls at third base before the Braves take batting practice. He played third base in high school, but hadn’t played it since spending five games there in rookie ball

a decade ago. However, Freeman said it hasn’t felt awkward and only one play has been difficult.

“The slow backhand. So pretty much a bunt, running to field a bunt,” he said. “That’s the only one I’m having trouble with, and it’s not really trouble. It’s getting my feet in the right position. I’m ready to go. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll probably get 15 balls hit to me the first game.”

On Wednesday, he intended to take his first full pregame workout: infield drills and batting practice on the field. Freeman progressed in the past week from taking dry swings to hitting balls off a tee to hitting soft-tossed balls in the indoor batting cage. Now he’ll take the next big step: live batting practice.

“Just soft-toss today, but it was really good,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said Tuesday. “He was torquing that bat pretty good and looked like he was gameready really, to me. If nothing else, he’s going to be in the best shape of his life from all the working out.”

Indeed, Freeman said his legs are stronger than before the injury from all the running and conditioning work he did before being cleared for baseball activities. He joked that it might help him hit the ball farther.

Braves bench coach Terry Pendleton, a former third baseman, said he’s been impressed by Freeman’s footwork and thinks he’ll be able to handle the position. Freeman has worked daily with infield instructor and third-base coach Ron Washington.

Though some fans have expressed concern about his returning so soon from a fractured bone, Freeman said he’s had no pain with the bone and that a ligament in the wrist has steadily progressed after some initial soreness from being in a cast for four weeks followed by so much initial activity. He’s spent long hours with physical therapist Andrew Hauser, the Braves’ director of player health and performance.

“Each day it’s feeling better, the ligament’s feeling a lot better,” he said. “The bone obviously feels fine. Still not 100 percent in the ligament area, but each day it’s getting better because Andrew is working on it.”

There has been no swelling in the wrist and no visible atrophy in Freeman’s left forearm despite being in a cast for nearly a month. He said the forearm was only 1½ centimeters smaller in circumference after the cast came off.

“And we’re getting that back,” he said. “Everything’s feeling pretty good.”

Everything, perhaps, except his throwing shoulder, which Freeman’s had to ice — something he’d never done — from making so many throws to first or second base during his fielding sessions with Washington.

“Shoulder hurts more than my wrist,” he said Tuesday, smiling as he sat in the visiting clubhouse at Petco Park.