Colorado’s ace held things together despite his own struggles, but will need to be more consistent
Welcome to the 2024 edition of Ranking the Rockies, where we take a look back at every player to log playing time for the Rockies in 2024. The purpose of this list is to provide a snapshot of the player in context. The “Ranking” is an organizing principle that’s drawn from Baseball Reference’s WAR (rWAR). It’s not something the staff debated. We’ll begin with the player with the lowest rWAR and end up with the player with the highest.
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No. 23, Kyle Freeland, 0.0 rWAR
We’re a long time removed from Kyle Freeland’s 2018 campaign in which he nearly took home the Cy Young Award. Six years later, we’re seeing that “K-Free” has continued to develop, even if the results haven’t yet replicated his prior success.
Things started off inauspiciously for both Freeland and the Rockies, as he allowed 10 runs against the Diamondbacks on Opening Day. His next three starts, while not quite as catastrophic, were still ineffectual, and he was forced to miss time shortly after due to an elbow strain.
The injury put Freeland on the sideline for the entirety of the month of May, but it seemingly allowed him to take time to reset and fix his mechanics. That break worked wonders, as the left-hander came back and allowed just 7 runs over his next 32 1/3 innings, good for a 1.95 ERA.
Freeland would then experience a number of highs and lows for the remainder of the season, seeking consistency throughout and seemingly losing steam towards the end of the campaign. He’d have two or three solid starts in a row before suffering a big offensive outburst – this was the trend up until the end of 2024.
Now he enters 2025 as one of the most tenured players on the roster, second only to Germán Márquez. As such, he will likely be viewed as a leader and be expected to once again take the lead in their rotation, especially with Márquez’s health in question entering next year.
Things are changing, though. He’s no longer the exciting young prospect he was once was, and stars such as Ryan Feltner and Austin Gomber are poised to pass him by as the team’s number one arm. Freeland will be entering his ninth season in MLB and has exactly 200 starts under his belt – respectfully, he’s not getting any younger. With only two seasons remaining on his contract, he’s entering a crucial period of his career, and that is that he needs to solidify himself as an integral part of Colorado’s future.
Not that I think the Rockies will trade him, obviously. I’m more saying that, as the team continues to get younger and focus more on their newer talent on both sides of the ball, Freeland will need to prove that he should be retained to see the (hopeful) other side of this sort-of rebuild.
If he can pitch like he did when he returned from injury, he will fully establish himself as Colorado’s ace and potentially one of the better pitchers in the National League. If he continues to struggle, though, it will further cloud his long-term future with his hometown team.
It’s not panic time yet, but it is time to put his foot down and prove the doubters wrong, once and for all.