{"id":68652,"date":"2024-03-19T14:30:27","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T18:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=68652"},"modified":"2024-03-19T14:30:27","modified_gmt":"2024-03-19T18:30:27","slug":"kyle-freeland-opening-day-rockies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/03\/19\/kyle-freeland-opening-day-rockies\/","title":{"rendered":"This Rockies Starter Will Get His Third Shot at Opening Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Wednesday, the Colorado Rockies announced that starting pitcher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/f\/freelky01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kyle Freeland<\/a> will get the start on the mound on <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/03\/19\/opening-day-starting-pitchers-tracker\/\" target=\"_self\">Opening Day<\/a> against the Arizona Diamondbacks. This will be Freeland&#8217;s third Opening Day start, tying <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/m\/marquge01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-03-19_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Germ\u00e1n M\u00e1rquez<\/a> for the franchise lead. Through four Cactus League starts, he has 14 strikeouts to just one walk, a sign he could be a different pitcher from last year. The 2023 season saw him rack up 14 losses in 29 starts with a 5.03 ERA, the worst since his 2019 season. Freeland and the Rockies&#8217; <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/02\/03\/colorado-rockies-unpredictable-pitching\/#:~:text=The%20Colorado%20Rockies%20offensive%20unit,the%202024%20season%20or%202025.\" target=\"_self\">unpredictable pitching rotation<\/a> must prove plenty of people wrong in 2024.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-media-max-width=\"560\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Opening Day will be Freeland\u2019s day.<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/OpeningDay?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#OpeningDay<\/a> x <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/KFREE_21?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@KFREE_21<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/4XnyLE2zgr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/4XnyLE2zgr<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Colorado Rockies (@Rockies) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Rockies\/status\/1770115428511318067?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 19, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Kyle Freeland<\/strong> Gets the Opening Day Start<\/h2>\n<p><em>Previous Opening Day starts: 2019 and 2022, both with the Rockies<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>2023 season: 6-14, 5.03 ERA in 29 starts<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Freeland is in the third year of a five-year, $64.5 million contract. In the 2019 opener, Freeland pulled out the win on the road against the Miami Marlins. He held the Marlins to one run on two hits and struck out five across seven innings. In 2022, it was a different outcome for Freeland and the Rockies. He went 3 2\/3 innings as he coughed up five runs in a loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers.<\/p>\n<p>Freeland, 30, has spent his entire career with the Rockies. It was the clear choice for manager <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=blackbu02,blackbu01&amp;search=Bud+Black&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-03-19_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bud Black<\/a> to hand the ball to the left-hander as M\u00e1rquez and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/senzaan01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-03-19_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Antonio Senzatela<\/a> are recovering from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/j\/johnto01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-03-19_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tommy Jo<\/a>h<a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/j\/johnto01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-03-19_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">n<\/a> surgery. This can give Freeland the chance to step outside the box and serve as a leader.<\/p>\n<p>While facing Arizona, the seven-year Rockies starter has recorded a 5.35 ERA and 73 strikeouts. He&#8217;s never pitched more than seven innings against the D-Backs. Freeland will be up against <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/g\/galleza01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2024-03-19_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Zac Gallen<\/a>, who is coming off a fantastic 2023 season where he finished third in the NL Cy Young Award voting. Gallen threw a career-high 210 innings during the regular season.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo: \u00a9 Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Wednesday, the Colorado Rockies announced that starting pitcher Kyle Freeland will get the start on the mound on Opening Day against the Arizona Diamondbacks. This will be Freeland&#8217;s third Opening Day start, tying Germ\u00e1n M\u00e1rquez for the franchise lead. Through four Cactus League starts, he has 14 strikeouts to just one walk, a sign [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4893,"featured_media":68659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,1071,35],"tags":[3868,326,394,106,3867,2227,1820],"class_list":["post-68652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rockies","category-mlb","category-news","tag-antonio-senzatela","tag-arizona-diamondbacks","tag-bud-black","tag-colorado-rockies","tag-german-marquez","tag-kyle-freeland","tag-zac-gallen"],"modified_by":"Matt Graves","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}