Kyle Freeland walked into Coors Field on Tuesday with his future hanging in the balance and walked out in tears after what might have been his final start for the Rockies.
The left-hander knew the stakes before he ever took the mound. His five-year contract is up, and the $17 million player option for next season required 170 innings this year - a mark injuries made out of reach long ago. For the first time in his major-league career, the Denver native is headed toward free agency.
He said afterward, “I didn’t know when it was going to hit me,” and it hit him in the players’ parking lot, where the possibility of making one last start at Coors Field suddenly felt real. Freeland tried to take it all in - the people in the hallways, the walk to the field, the ballpark he has called home for his entire big-league life - before the game turned on him.
It turned fast. Freeland allowed nine hits and five earned runs in three innings plus one batter, and when manager Warren Schaeffer came out after a leadoff single in the fourth, the lefty headed to the dugout to a standing ovation. He waved to the crowd, hugged teammates and cried.
The outing also came in Colorado’s 100th loss of the season, another grim marker in a year that has gone sideways in a hurry. If this was the end of Freeland’s Rockies run, it was not the kind of finish anyone would have drawn up. Then again, nothing about pitching for this team has ever been simple.
Freeland’s story with the Rockies has always carried a hometown feel. He grew up in Denver, starred at Thomas Jefferson High School, and was drafted eighth overall by his hometown club in 2014.
He debuted at Coors Field in 2017 and won his first major-league start. The next season brought the high point of his career: a 17-7 record, a 2.85 ERA, a fourth-place finish in Cy Young voting and a ridiculous 2.40 ERA at Coors Field.
Then came the postseason moment that still stands as the Rockies’ last playoff victory. On three days’ rest at Wrigley Field, Freeland threw 6⅔ scoreless innings in the Wild Card game.
Eight. Years.
Ago.
Since then, the road has been rough for both pitcher and team. Freeland has topped a 5.00 ERA in three of the last four seasons, and his ERA sits above 6.50 this year. Colorado’s 100th loss on Tuesday also made the Rockies the first team since the expansion Mets of 1962-65 to lose 100 games four straight years.
That reality makes the decision on Freeland more complicated than a simple appreciation of what he means to fans. They love him.
There’s no doubt about that. But Paul DePodesta and Josh Byrnes have been charged with building what comes next, not preserving what came before.
Freeland will be 34 next season, and the Rockies need pitching far more than they need sentiment.
Still, there’s a reason this one feels bigger than the numbers on a stat sheet.
Freeland has started 256 games for Colorado, 50 more than anyone else in franchise history. He holds the team records for starts and innings pitched, owns the best pitching WAR in franchise history, ranks second in strikeouts and third in wins.
Every one of those pitches came in the same uniform, for the team from the city where he grew up. That kind of career is rare anywhere, and rarer still now.
Freeland recently said it “would be nice to spend a whole career in Colorado,” while also admitting baseball doesn’t always work out that way. Maybe another team gives him a chance to pitch away from altitude.
Maybe Colorado decides those innings are better spent searching for the next Kyle Freeland. Or maybe there’s still a deal that works for both sides at a very different number than $17 million.
If Tuesday was a goodbye, it was a messy one. But it was also a reminder of everything Freeland has meant to the Rockies: the hometown kid, the 2.40 ERA at Coors in 2018, the Wrigley gem, the 256 starts, nearly 1,400 innings, and the sight of a grown man crying in the dugout because wearing Colorado across his chest mattered that much.
If that was the end, it was an ugly final chapter. It was also one hell of a career.
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