In the moment, Kyle Freeland feared the worst. It seemed like something sneaked up behind him. And then he was knees-down in the grass infield with pain shooting through his arm.
“It felt like a knife got put in the back of my shoulder,” Freeland said. “It’s a gut-wrenching feeling because in the moment, you don’t know exactly what’s wrong.”
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The Rockies panicked, too. Their prized lefty pitcher was swaggering back into the form that not long ago put him in the National League’s Cy Young conversation. A shortened season in 2020 allowed Freeland to re-hone his five-pitch mix, to sequence them into intentional randomness, or at least something that appears nonlinear to a hitter. He was again controlling the rules of a guessing game with batters.
A human body is not built to pitch a baseball 95 mph, over and over, for weeks and years. And on the near eve of Opening Day, Freeland reached back for a curveball but found only pain, sailing the pitch wide of the plate at Hohokam Stadium in Arizona. There are two injuries that live in the nightmares of every pitcher, an elbow ligament tear and a cartilage tear in the shoulder. Those injuries can end a career.
“When you see a pitcher buckle over and grab his arm, man, that hits you right in the stomach,” Black said. “You feel sick. That’s how I felt. That’s how all of us felt.”
Relief came quickly. The Rockies rushed Freeland into an imaging test on his shoulder. And within 24 hours, they triple-checked the results with three doctors. All of them concurred: It’s OK to exhale. Freeland strained his shoulder, they said, but nothing so serious to require surgery. What could have been a season-ending injury before the season started turned into only a speed bump.
On Saturday in El Paso, Freeland will start a rehabilitation process the Rockies hope will put him quickly back into their rotation. He will start for Triple-A Albuquerque in a game against the Chihuahuas. He will throw between 60-70 pitches under the close eye of Isotopes manager Warren Schaeffer and pitching coach Blaine Beatty.
If those pitches unfurl cleanly, Freeland will throw again in Albuquerque on May 20 against the Oklahoma City Dodgers, somewhere in the range of 80 pitches. And, like a pitcher’s progression at the end of the spring Cactus League, Freeland’s next stop should be New York.
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If he remains healthy and strong in those two outings, the Rockies expect Freeland will pitch twice on an East Coast road trip, first on May 25 against the Mets, then again in Pittsburgh against the Pirates on May 30.
Freeland will slot in behind Germán Márquez in the No. 2 spot in Colorado’s rotation, followed by Antonio Senzatela, Jon Gray and Austin Gomber – exactly as the Rockies planned in March. They will, hopefully, have the band back together.
“We feel good about it, and Kyle’s arm feels great,” Colorado manager Bud Black said. “That’s the most important thing, his health. And along the way, he’s felt confident in where he is physically. And mentally, which is also a big hurdle to overcome.”
The Rockies’ rotation has struggled to keep up through six weeks, with the highest walk rate in the National League and a .252 batting average against that’s better only than the Cubs. In Freeland’s place, they called on Chi Chi González, who threw one of their best-pitched games of the season Thursday against the Reds, on seven shutout innings. Otherwise, though, they are waiting to break out.
So needy for Freeland’s presence, even in a hoodie, the Rockies flew him from Arizona to San Francisco in late April to join a West Coast road trip. He continued his rehab on the run with Rockies trainers and scouted games in the dugout, in part as support for the rotation he’d been removed from and in part to bring his mind back to speed.
“Kyle is watching Longoria, Posey, Belt, Dickerson,” Black said, rattling through the Giants’ lineup. “He’s getting his own scouting report in real-time, live at the ballpark. He’s watching talent from the best seat in the house, and he’s talking baseball for nine innings. Even though he’s not playing, he’s learning.
“And there’s an esprit de corps,” Black said. “There’s a camaraderie.”
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At 14-24 before a Friday night game against the Reds, the Rockies have the worst record in the NL. Their offense continues to sputter, perhaps the worst lineup in baseball. Their improvements should come from a talented rotation, the starting pitching staff that carried them to the playoffs in 2017 and 2018. Márquez and Gray were cogs in that rotation. Senzatela, too. And especially Freeland.
His return is their best chance yet to jump-start a season stalled from Day 1. He will change only his habits, adding a more thorough and watchful routine between starts to protect his arm as much as possible. His five-pitch mix and a plan to maximize it remain.
“It’s nice to have everybody pulling for you,” Freeland said. “Everything feels good. I’m not guarding it at all. I’m letting it eat. So we’re just gonna keep moving forward.”
(Photo of Freeland celebrating in April 2021: Matthew Stockman/Getty Images)