Kyle Freeland is about to take the Coors Field mound for what could be one of the most important starts of his Rockies career, and maybe the last one in a Colorado uniform.
The Denver native has spent the past 10 years with the organization he grew up watching. On Tuesday night, he is scheduled to start against the Arizona Diamondbacks, and the setting gives the outing a weight that goes well beyond one more turn through the rotation.
Freeland’s current five-year, $64.5 million contract is nearing its end, and Colorado does not have to bring him back. He has a $17 million player option in the deal, but it would have vested only if he reached 170 innings this season.
That number is no longer in play. Freeland had logged 128.1 innings before Tuesday’s scheduled start.
At 33, he has not put together the kind of season he likely pictured when the year began. He is 4-10 with a 6.38 ERA and 104 strikeouts in 24 starts. His season also has been interrupted by cervical radiculopathy, a pinched nerve in his neck, which has kept him out since August.
The Rockies made Freeland the No. 8 overall pick in the 2014 MLB Draft while he was finishing his college career at the University of Evansville. Before that, he was already a familiar name around Denver as a product of Thomas Jefferson High School. When Colorado selected him on April 7, 2017, it completed the hometown arc and gave him the chance to pitch in the home opener against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Nearly a decade later, he still has not thrown a pitch for another major league team. That could change soon.
Freeland’s peak came back in 2018, when he went 17-7 with a 2.85 ERA over 202.1 innings and finished fourth in National League Cy Young Award voting. At Coors Field, where pitching success is never easy to come by, he was even better at home that season, posting a 2.40 ERA in 15 home starts - the lowest home ERA in franchise history.
That same year, he played a major role in one of the Rockies’ biggest postseason moments. In the NL Wild Card Game at Wrigley Field, Freeland worked 6.2 scoreless innings against the Chicago Cubs as Colorado won 2-1 in a 13-inning game.
He has also been around for the rough stretches, including one of the hardest runs in franchise history. Now president of baseball operations Paul DePodesta will have to sort out what comes next in Colorado and whether Freeland fits into it.
For Rockies fans, No. 21 jogging out to the mound at Coors Field has become part of the scenery. Tuesday could carry a different kind of finality, and the walk off the field may end up meaning as much as the one to it.
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