Freeland wraps up best year ever by Rockies pitcher

Friday night at Coors Field, Rockies ace Kyle Freeland didn’t have his usual stuff. The southpaw’s pinpoint command wasn’t there, and the Nationals tagged him for a careerhigh 11 hits allowed.

But Freeland, in a sublime ending to a Cy Young Awardcaliber season, overcame those deficiencies and helped lead Colorado to the clinching of a postseason berth in consecutive seasons for the first time while making franchise history of his own.

“It’s incredible. I dreamt of this as a little kid, and I never thought I’d be in this position to do it,” Freeland said after the redhot Rockies defeated Washington 52 and stretched their winning streak to eight games. “But the work’s not done. We still have two more games, and we’re looking to take the division.”

While pitching six innings of tworun ball, Freeland consistently worked around traffic and made big pitch after big pitch in front of a sellout crowd at Coors Field. All four of his strikeouts came at optimal times. The only damage was Trea Turner’s twoout, tworun triple in the fourth inning after Freeland overcame a basesloaded, oneout jam two frames before that.

“Even with the early baserunners, we had to stick to our game plan — make them uncomfortable inside, get something weak, get a ball on the ground and get out of it,” said Freeland, who improved to 177. “A couple of times, we were fortunate to get out of it with a strikeout or the groundball right back to me for a double play (to end the second).”

His final stat line was good enough to keep Freeland’s season ERA (2.85) a shade better than Ubaldo Jimenez’s team record of 2.88 in 2010. Freeland also cemented the home ERA record with a 2.40 ERA in 15 starts, and the Rockies went 100 in his final 10 home outings. His last loss in LoDo was June 10.

The Thomas Jefferson High School graduate also became the first Rockies pitcher to throw 200plus innings since Jimenez in 2010 and is just the 10th bigleague pitcher to accomplish that feat this season in an era when bullpens reign supreme.

But Freeland took the humble road when asked to talk about his individual success this season.

“That’s nice, but in the grand scheme of things, that’s not what I’m playing for and that’s not what this team is playing for,” Freeland said. “We’re playing for Rocktober.”

It’s baseball poetry that Freeland, in the belly of the elevation beast for the final time this regular season, had to grind in order to turn in an 11th consecutive quality start.

After conquering Coors Field all summer, Freeland pitched his hometown team into October. You couldn’t script it any better, even if Freeland didn’t flash dominance and pizzazz Friday.