DENVER – Kyle Freeland put a rough year at Coors Field for him and the Rockies behind him with a happy shout.
This time, the ground ball that Freeland forced from the Angels’ Logan O’Hoppe went to the right place, to shortstop Ezequiel Tovar. Rookie second baseman Ryan Ritter fielded the low throw and made a diving relay to first base for a double play to end the last of Freeland’s six strong innings on Sunday afternoon.
The Rockies, using Blaine Crim’s home run and two RBIs, defeated the Angels, 3-1. It was a relief of an ending of the worst home slate in club history – 25-56. The negative 210 runs was the second-worst home run differential since 1900.
“I’ve got one more start,” Freeland said a couple of days ago. “We want to finish as strong as we can. But with that, it’ll be somewhat nice to exhale and be like, ‘That season is over. What can I learn from it?’ Then move forward.
“The gravity of the season has weighed on it, obviously not the situation we want to be in.”
Freeland struck out seven and held the Angels to one run on five hits. It all gave him a chance to shut out all the emotion of a season that, from the beginning, was enough to make men in Purple Pinstripes scream.
“Shocked is a good word for it, especially early in the season,” Freeland said a couple days ago. “I said in Spring Training we were excited about this team – good young guys, guys just getting to the big leagues, good veterans.
“It just completely flopped on us. We were all looking around like, ‘What happened? Where did we go drastically wrong with this?'”
In an odd season, Freeland (5-16, 5.00 ERA in 30 starts) missed time in June with back stiffness, and was badly affected by illness in two July starts that saw him give up 10 runs (eight earned) in 5 2/3 innings. Sometimes when he did well, it didn’t work out. The 15 unearned runs teams scored with him on the mound is the most in the Majors and the most to afflict a Rockies pitcher during the Statcast era (since 2015).
But Sunday showed what Freeland, 32, can do when his fastball placement opens the door for his cutter, sweeper and changeup. Freeland finished this season with a career-high 10.91 strikeouts per nine innings. It was his seventh contest with six or more strikeouts. Those included a career-high 10 in eight innings of a 3-0 victory over the Padres on Sept. 5.
Next season, Freeland is due $17 million, and he can earn another year at the same salary if he pitches 170 innings. With the rotation expected to be young or mostly young around him, the Rockies need the form Freeland displayed on Sunday on a regular basis.
“It’s always going to be the command of my fastball throughout the zone – up and in, down and in, down and away, up and away,” Freeland said. “If I’m able to execute a fastball on both sides and hit my spots, then all my breakers are completely opened up and I can use my arsenal how I want.”
Freeland, Germán Márquez and Antonio Senzatela came in as rookie in 2017, the first of two straight postseason trips. All three signed multi-year contracts. But Freeland struggled on and off with injuries and on-again, off-again form, and Márquez and Senzatela underwent Tommy John right elbow surgeries in 2023.
During the head-turning early-season struggles, the Rockies relieved manager Bud Black and bench coach Mike Redmond of their duties, making the start harder to take. But he clicked with interim manager Warren Schaeffer.
“Another heavy spot for myself was getting rid of Buddy and Red, those guys that I had as a manager and coach my whole career," Freeland said. "Getting through the first half was tough for all of us, but we got to the All-Star break and refocused.
“Schaeff is doing an incredible job for only being in the big leagues as a coach for a few years. I’ve had multiple conversations, and he has talked with [veterans] Kyle Farmer and Ryan McMahon [traded to the Yankees] when he was here. He’s done a great job shaping the team how he wants it shaped. Hopefully, he’ll be the manager going into next year.”
Now Márquez is poised to enter free agency and Senzatela is completing a season in which he never found full health and form.
Freeland wants the 2026 Rockies to be full of pleasant surprises.
“With the team as young as it is, we have been in a touch of a rebuild mode,” Freeland said. “But we need to teach these young guys how to win, how to be healthy for 162. It’s a young team, young manager and young coaching staff. There are a lot of challenges that we need to face head on.”