has raved about the changes the Rockies have made<\/a> to their front office and coaching staff in the way of last season, said he wants to set a strong tone in the first game.<\/p>\n\u201cTone setting is always important, whether it\u2019s game 45 or game one or game 162,\u201d Freeland told reporters. \u201cRolling into everything that\u2019s new and everything that we\u2019ve changed, there\u2019s going to be a little more emphasis on that tone, making sure we really want to set that tone the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Rockies signed three veteran starters \u2014 right-handers Michael Lorenzen and Tomoyuki Sugano and lefty Jose Quintana\u00a0 \u2014 in an attempt to stabilize their shaky rotation, but manager Warren Schaffer tabbed Freeland for the honor of throwing Colorado\u2019s first pitch of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cAny time you get a veteran on board with a lot of changes that you\u2019re trying to make, it\u2019s really good,\u201d Schaeffer said. \u201cIt\u2019s good for Kyle to get that fifth opening day start, but there were some thoughts (about starting another veteran). Quintana (37) has been pitching a long time, but when I talked to \u2018Q\u2019 in here this morning, he was really happy for \u2018Free.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Freeland got a late start in spring training because he was dealing with lower back spasms. Since returning, Freeland has made two solid starts, posting a 5.0 ERA with four hits, three walks, and six strikeouts.<\/p>\n
This is a big season for Freeland. He is entering the final year of the five-year, $64.5 million contract extension signed in April 2022. Freeland holds a $17 million vesting, player option for 2027 that will kick in if he pitches 170 innings.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Want more Rockies news? Sign up for the Rockies Insider to get all our MLB analysis.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Colorado Kid will start the Rockies\u2019 season for the fifth time. On Tuesday, the club announced that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2395],"tags":[5,52,1009,131,1022,853,1816,778,58,4171,4,1027,185,151,775,5046,9130],"class_list":["post-629160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami-marlins","tag-baseball","tag-colorado-rockies","tag-coors-field","tag-jose-quintana","tag-kyle-freeland","tag-latest-headlines","tag-marlins","tag-miami","tag-miami-marlins","tag-miamimarlins","tag-mlb","tag-more-rockies-news","tag-sports","tag-spring-training","tag-tomoyuki-sugano","tag-victor-vodnik","tag-warren-schaeffer"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116247563088272619","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}