On the surface, it might not have looked like much of a slump.

To star Dodgers slugger Freddie Freeman, however, his performance through much of April was certainly starting to feel like one.

Entering play Monday, Freeman was batting .306 with eight doubles, two home runs and 19 RBIs. He had a .861 on-base-plus-slugging percentage and 142 OPS+ (meaning, essentially, he has been 42% more productive than the average MLB hitter).

Those were drops from his first two seasons in L.A., in which he finished top-five in MVP voting both times.

But a slump? Really?

"I take pride in being consistent," Freeman said. "And I'm not being consistent right now."

That, at least, was what Freeman was feeling two weeks ago, in the midst of an eight-for-47 stretch that dropped his batting average to .259.

"I'm not hitting the pitches I'd normally hit," Freeman said then. "There's a lot going on up there. Trying to figure it out."

There are points in every season where Freeman cools off, and his precise swing mechanics get out of whack. Almost always, it's because his hips rotate too open, and his bat cuts short and across the strike zone — not square and straight through it.

The result: Freeman will stop hitting fastballs for opposite-field line drives, or barrel up breaking pitches into the right-center field gap. Instead, he will hit lazy pop-flys, or yank a ground ball to the pull side, or simply foul off mistake pitches he'd typically clobber.

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