CINCINNATI — As soon as Ke’Bryan Hayes led off the second inning of Saturday’s 9-2 victory over the Detroit Tigers, Cincinnati Reds assistant hitting coach Alex Peláez knew exactly what TJ Friedl was going to do — bunt.
Peláez was Friedl’s hitting coach at what was then High-A Daytona and at Triple-A Louisville before joining the Reds’ big-league staff for the 2025 season. He’s seen plenty of Friedl since 2017, when Friedl first played for him. When things aren’t going well for Friedl, who entered Saturday hitting just .159, he will always look for an opportunity to bunt as a way to reset himself physically.
“I’ve used it my entire career, especially when I get too spinny — pulling off the ball or maybe not closing my front side as much as I should,” Friedl said. “I do it in BP in the tunnels down below. Like if I take a couple bad swings, I’ll bunt one down the 3rd baseline to just stick my nose in there, watch the ball hit the bat and then go back to swinging.”
With no outs and a runner on second, Friedl couldn’t have asked for a better situation.
“Worst-case scenario I move him over, but also reset myself and just watch the ball hit the bat,” Friedl said. “It helped that it was a knuckle-curve because you’ve really got to stay on that to put it down the third-base line. In a sense, that’s my reset button.”
The leadoff man is important to any team, but on a team that has Elly De La Cruz and Sal Stewart in the heart of the order, baserunners are paramount for a Reds offense that struggled scoring runs to start the season, but improved to 18-9 on the season. Last year, only two leadoff hitters — Shohei Ohtani and Fernando Tatis Jr. — reached base two or more times in a game more than Friedl’s 77. His on-base percentage of .364 batting first last season was the fourth-best mark in the majors among players who played at least 50 games as a leadoff man.
Entering Saturday, Friedl’s on-base percentage was .260, so a reset was certainly needed.
TJ Friedl watches his first homer of the season go out on Saturday night. (Aaron Doster / Imagn Images)
“I think him and (Matt McLain) both, because we have Elly and Sal swinging the bat so well, that the more they’re on, it can create some problems,” Reds manager Terry Francona said.
Stewart continued his Rookie of the Year pace Saturday, with three hits and five driven in. His fifth and final RBI was Friedl, scoring from second after a single, proving Francona’s point.
If the bunt was a physical reset, Friedl’s first hit of the day, a check-swing bloop double, was a bit of a mental reset, reminding him that the ball can fall his way from time to time. Friedl checked his 3-1 swing against reliever Burch Smith and the ball found his bat, falling just behind Tigers third baseman Colt Keith.
“I like to say ‘It all evens out at the end of the season,’ even though we all know it doesn’t,” Friedl said. “That’s what I live by in my head. And today I get a check-swing double over the third baseman’s head who is playing in because I’m going to bunt.”
But it was Friedl’s sixth-inning at bat against lefty Tyler Holton that let him know he’d stopped pulling his front shoulder. On an 0-2 count, Holton threw a sweeper to the outside corner of the plate and Friedl served it into left.
“With a big sweeper guy like that, it lets me know I’m directionally staying on it through center field,” Friedl said of his swing. “Because if my front shoulder goes (ahead) a little bit, that’s a swing and a miss. If I can stay on it and keep my direction through center field, I can get that broken-bat blooper.”
Friedl’s double had an exit velocity of 52 mph and a hit probability of 15 percent. His single was 68.1 mph off the bat. Friedl came up one last time in the eighth against right-hander Drew Anderson, who struck him out on four pitches the night before. With a curveball that he didn’t hit Friday at the front of his mind, Friedl let the first one he saw Saturday go by, but not the second, launching his first home run of the season, the day after McLain and Nathaniel Lowe collected theirs.
“It’s a lot of fun when everyone’s rolling together, pulling for each other,” Friedl said. “It could be a different guy every day. That’s the makeup of this clubhouse and this team — you can come in here every day and somebody’s going to do something special.”
When Friedl steps to the plate for the first time on Sunday, the scoreboard will still show him with a .185 average, but that slow start is a little easier to take when the team’s 18-9.