Kyle Freeland turned in a marquee pitching performance for the Rockies in 2018, checking nearly every possible box in a season that saw him emerge as a star on both the local and national stage.
The southpaw set club records for single-season ERA (2.85) and home ERA (2.40). He won 17 games, pitching Colorado into the playoffs for consecutive seasons for the first time in franchise history. And once in October, Freeland delivered one of the most masterful performances in club history, with 6 ⅔ scoreless innings in an extra-innings win over the Cubs at Wrigley Field.
Beyond his all-star snub and not winning the Cy Young Award — he finished fourth in the National League voting — there wasn’t anything left for Freeland to prove. And now this year, Freeland’s continued, consistent reliability is one of the primary reasons Colorado has no qualms standing behind an already-stated goal, a run at the World Series, before the team even reports to spring training,
“Kyle made great strides from 2017 to 2018, but we don’t need great strides from him this year,” manager Bud Black said. “We just need him to do what he’s very capable of, which is what you saw last year, in order to get where we want to go.”
Freeland explained his mindset heading into 2019, his third year in the bigs, is “not one of those things where I’m trying to top the season before.” Colorado’s likely Opening Day starter spent this offseason resting and recently re-finding the groove he was on last summer, when his intensity and focus on pitching to weak contact made him the team’s most reliable starter.
“Last offseason we broke down my mechanics and changed things,” Freeland explained. “We took the pause away from the bottom of my delivery and put it at the top, and that allowed me to put my weight on my back side and be more consistent down the mound on all my pitches.
“But this offseason, once we started my dry work, it’s just been more about picking up where I left off.”
After throwing 202 ⅓ innings last year — “by far the most I’ve ever thrown,” Freeland notes — he didn’t touch a ball until the calendar turned to January. In the weeks since, he’s been slowing ramping himself up. He’s currently four 20-pitch bullpens into his training while looking to embrace a workhorse role again this summer, and in the innumerable ones after.
That high-innings vision is complemented by the hybrid workouts the southpaw credits with increasing his stamina in the second half of last season, after he switched up his routine from harder in-season weight lifting to a low-volume, high-weight approach.
“My focus is all on building that stamina early, so I don’t have to worry about anything in September and October (or worry about) going deep into games, consistently hitting that 200-inning mark and just being of those guys who is out there six, seven, eight innings every time,” Freeland said.
The counted-on production from Freeland — along with German Marquez, a right-hander with sky-high potential — is also sparking early confidence in the team’s core positional players, even in light of a quiet offseason for Colorado in which the club has made considerably less noise than their rivals within the division and the National League overall.
“The starters, led by Freeland, have become a strong point of our team,” shortstop Trevor Story said. “That’s why you’ve seen the success we’ve had the past couple years … That’s where a lot of our confidence comes from. And Freeland is leading (the success), so we expect that to continue.”
