Freeman: Blaming Fredi Gonzalez for Braves' woes 'unfair'

Atlanta Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez got a vote of confidence Wednesday from his best player.

Amid reports that the Braves are considering firing Gonzalez, first baseman Freddie Freeman insisted that the players, and not the embattled skipper, are at fault for the team's disastrous 7-20 start.

"I don't know if it's fair to put it all on him, because he's not a player," Freeman told David O'Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution after his team's 8-0 loss to the New York Mets on Wednesday. "We're the 25 guys that got to go out there and play every day, and we're obviously not playing to our capabilities. And to say that's Fredi's fault is unfair, in my opinion."

Freeman has certainly been doing his part to get the rebuilding Braves out of their funk, as he sports a .263/.369/.421 line while hitting three home runs. That's about all that can be said, though, as the rest of his teammates haven't produced, particularly in the power department: Freeman's three homers represent half the team's total power output this year.

The 26-year-old backed up his defense of Gonzalez by pointing to how his team has played, rather than the win-loss columns.

"We're in pretty much every single game except for today," Freeman said. "We've only been beaten bad in a couple of games, once by the Nationals, once by the Cardinals. I feel like we've been in a lot of games."

With every loss, though, speculation about the status of Gonzalez - who's managed the Braves since 2011, when he took over for Hall of Famer Bobby Cox - will continue to grow. Right now, Freeman says, the team's play is not helping to cool down their manager's seat.

"The guys he puts in the lineup, the guys he puts in games, we have to do our jobs, and we just haven't done that for the first 27 games," Freeman said. "That's not No. 33's (Gonzalez) fault, that's our fault."