Freeland's rough night ties inauspicious mark

CINCINNATI -- Rockies left-hander Kyle Freeland started Friday night on a club-record pace, and manager Bud Black had little choice but to let him struggle toward a history no one wants.

The five home runs Freeland served up in four-plus innings tied a club mark as the Rockies fell to the Reds, 11-5, in the opener of a three-game series at Great American Ball Park.

While giving up nine runs (eight earned), Freeland joined Mark Thompson (April 19, 1998, vs. the Braves), Shawn Chacon (July 8, 2001, vs. the Angels) and Alex White (Sept. 10, 2011, vs. the Reds) as Rockies pitchers who gave up five homers in a game. Black -- whose team fell to 5-25 on the road -- stayed with the ineffective Freeland since long reliever Jhoulys Chacín needed 30 pitches in his one inning of work in Thursday night’s 11-4 loss at Miami.

“Right now, I’m just not hitting spots,” Freeland said. “That’s what it’s coming down to. It’s in the zone, up in the zone, bad pitches, stuff backing up, completely missing spots. When it’s supposed to be down and away, when it’s supposed to be up and in -- it’s just not there.”

Trouble arrived early for Freeland, who was making his fourth start of 2021 after missing the season’s first seven weeks with a left shoulder strain. Nick Castellanos homered for two runs in the first inning. Scott Heineman added a two-run homer in the second, and Joey Votto went deep for three runs in the third. Kyle Farmer and Tyler Stephenson led off the fourth and fifth, respectively, with homers.

According to STATS Inc., the Reds’ performance Friday was the eighth occasion in MLB history in which a team homered in each of the first five innings, and it marked the third time the homers came from five different players.

“For Kyle to be effective -- for a lot of pitchers, for that matter -- they’ve got to be down at the knees and they’ve got to be high enough at the letters at the very top of the strike zone," Black said. "And also, it’s getting the ball out of the middle of the plate.

“It looks as though Kyle's getting hurt by mistakes. He's not getting away with anything right now. That happens. I've been in his shoes, I know what that feels like. I've given up -- in my career -- games like that.”

So has Freeland. In 2019, a year that saw him deal with a groin injury and in which he found himself optioned to Triple-A Albuquerque, Freeland finished with a 6.73 ERA. He rebounded last season, when he led the Majors in double-play grounders induced (14). But in comparing his current struggles (9.00 ERA) to ‘19, Freeland said “it feels about the same.”

In his first three starts, Freeland had an on-again, off-again relationship with the strike zone and struggled to give the team innings. On Friday, two-thirds of his pitches were strikes, but mere strike-throwing doesn’t do a pitcher much good when five of the eight hits against him send a fan home with a special baseball.

“There are a few tweaks that I made in the bullpen between my last start and this start that I thought would clean things up, but that clearly wasn’t the case,” Freeland said. “At this point it’s: Just keep going.

“At this point, four starts in, it can’t be used as an excuse that I’m getting back into things and still getting my feet wet. These games count, and me not going out there and performing to the best of my ability is not going to help the ballclub.”