There is an art to the mound visit. The pitcher’s circle is his preserve, an invitation-only island of focus and calculation. Any other player trying to broach that area had better come correct.
“Pitchers are a little different,” Rockies third baseman said. “They like to be quiet and mind their own business. Sometimes you don’t want to cross a line with them or get in the way of their zone when they’re locked in.”
When Kyle Freeland, the Rockies’ 23-year-old left-hander who debuted Friday at , scuffled through the first inning and loaded the bases, Arenado made a pass and walked toward the mound. Arenado will never visit or . Those pitchers would look right through an infielder. Freeland needed some attention.
“He’s a young buck. I think he might like a little motivation,” Arenado said.
Arenado made it halfway to the mound.
“I started to go out,” he said. “But I stopped and shut up and let him do his thing.”
Freeland, the smooth strike-thrower from Denver’s Thomas Jefferson High School, was just getting started on his way to an impressive six innings in the Rockies’ 2-1 victory over the Dodgers. Freeland, just the fifth Colorado-born player to appear in a game for the Rockies, gave up four hits and one run. He struck out six.
“I was trying to play it cool. Butterflies were definitely jumping around my stomach,” Freeland said. “But I tried to stay focused. I got out of that bases-loaded jam in the first inning and got in a groove. I knew how my pitches were working.”
Freeland’s arrival, less than three years after the Rockies drafted him in the first round out of the University of Evansville in Indiana, was as necessary as it was dramatic. Manager Bud Black filled the final two slots in the Rockies’ rotation with rookies, first 22-year-old Antonio Senzatela, who pitched five shutout innings Thursday at Milwaukee, then Freeland. Black assigned Freeland to start Friday in part because of his hometown experience pitching in Denver and for a favorable matchup against a lefty-heavy Dodgers batting order.
But Freeland was 18 years old the last time he pitched in Denver, in a playoff game for the Spartans at a high school field without the third deck and sea of grass at Coors Field. When the Dodgers’ Yasmani Grandal came to bat in the first inning with the bases loaded, Freeland talked himself through the paces.
“Keep pounding the zone,” he told himself. “Keep attacking that spot. Soon enough, they’ll swing at ’em or there will be a called strike.”
After he forced Grandal to ground out to end the first inning, and Kike Hernandez to ground out to start the second, Freeland struck out the next four batters. He caught Joc Pederson looking with a 94 mph cutting fastball. He breezed through Los Angeles pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu on three pitches. He struck out leadoff hitter Logan Forsythe on a cutter in the third and Franklin Gutierrez on three different pitches.
Freeland threw a full arsenal: fastballs in and out, cutters, sinkers away, sliders, curves, change-ups. He needed only 12 pitches to get through the second and sixth innings.
“I know he wasn’t calm. But he looked calm,” Black said. “He settled in. That was a great way to start a career.”
Freeland sneaked out of the Rockies’ dugout Friday morning before a sellout crowd of 49,169 had streamed in, looking up at the green seats of Coors Field and the dirt mound in the middle of the diamond. Denver will always be his hometown. This is now his home ballpark.
“I wanted to see where I am,” Freeland said, “and sink it all in.”
Denver debut
Kyle Freeland’s debut Friday, and in his hometown, led the Rockies to a 2-1 victory over a dangerous Dodgers lineup. How the lefty navigated his first big-league outing:
IP … Hits … ER … BB … SO … ERA
6.0 … 4 … 1 … 2 … 6 … 1.50
Doubles: Justin Turner in the third (stranded) and Andy Van Slyke in the fourth (scored).
Strikeouts: Logan Forsythe (swinging on a fastball in the first), Joc Pederson (looking at a 94-mph cutter in the second), Hyun-Jin Ryu (on three pitches in the second), Forsythe (with a two-seam sinker in the third), Franklin Gutierrez (on a 93-mph fastball up in the third), Gutierrez (looking at a fadeaway slider in the fifth).
