Inside Kyle Freeland’s dominant start

»Thoughts, notes and CHICAGO tidbits from the 2018 NL wild card game between the Rockies and the Cubs on Tuesday night at Wrigley Field.

Lester’s haunts. opening walk

Despite not issuing a walk in 17 regular season starts at Wrigley Field this season, Jon Lester led off the game by issuing a five-pitch free pass to Charlie Blackmon. That ended up haunting him, as Colorado followed with DJ LeMahieu’s ground-rule double into the ivy of the outfield wall and a Nolan Arenado sacrifice fly to take a 1-0 lead.

Freeland

Mavoids early

After being spotted a 1-0 lead by his offense, Kyle Freeland came on in the bottom of the first and promptly yielded a leadoff single to Ben Zobrist. But Freeland, who unlike the rest of the Colorado rotation has mostly avoided opening-frame failures with a 3.00 ERA in the inning coming in, set down the next three batters to escape.

Short rest? No problems. damage.

Pitching on three days rest for the first time in his professional career, Freeland showed no signs of fatigue en route to six-plus shutout innings. In fact, he was throwing harder than he did at most any time this season. Over 82 pitches, the average velocity on his fastball was 93.3 mph as opposed to the 91.6 mph he averaged over the regular season. And his strike percentage was up markedly, too, at 73.1 percent compared to his 65.7 percent average coming in.

Long Rocktober road.

The grind of the season was taxing at its most critical time, as the Rockies traveled over 3,000 miles between three stadiums in as many days. That arduous trip began on Sunday in Denver, with a win over the Phillies to earn Monday’s tiebreaker in Los Angeles. After losing to the Dodgers on Monday afternoon, Colorado took a red-eye charter to Chicago.

Cubs’ woes. recent offensive

While Freeland followed up his Cy Young-caliber regular season to top Lester’s strong outing, the Cubs didn’t have a hot offense coming in. They were limited to one run in two of their final three regular season games, including the 3-1 loss to the Brewers in the NL Central tiebreaker. And entering Tuesday, the Cubs had scored one or zero runs 39 times, the worst mark in the National League.

Freelin’ fantastic

Kyle Freeland was superb in his postseason debut, throwing 6 M innings of four-hit baseball Tuesday night against the Cubs in the National League Wild Card game. It was the first scoreless postseason game by a pitcher in Rockies history. Pitches: 82

Strikes: 60

Balls: 22

Ks: 6

BBs: 1

Hits: 4

Earned runs: 0

Ground balls: 8 (7 outs) Pop/fly balls: 4 (3 outs) Line drives: 4 (3 outs)