Purple Row After Dark: Kyle Freeland looks ahead

After Rockies Fest ended last Saturday, Kyle Freeland, Hunter Goodman, and Jake McCarthy answered media questions.

We’ve reviewed comments from Goodman and McCarthy, so I thought we’d take tonight to consider what Freeland had to share. It’s been a productive offseason for the lefty, and he’s excited about the changes happening at 20th and Blake.

(This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)

On helping young pitchers learn to stop “nibbling”

It’s eliminating that fear and being confident and consistent in-zone, and keeping that confidence, whether whatever you throw in-zone gets hit or not, it’s keeping that confidence. And this is similar stuff that we’ve spoken to our pitching coaches about leading up to camp is going to be a learning curve for young guys and guys like me. But the great thing is we’re all very hungry to learn, to learn what they have to offer us and get things rolling in the direction and outline that we kind of have shaped right now.

On what he worked on over the offseason

For me, something that I worked on kind of goes back to last season. Towards the end, we made a little mechanical adjustment with my mechanics and my delivery, and kind of showed immediate, success from from doing it, and it was able to free up my arsenal when I was pitching. We did it towards the end of the season, but it was something that I could carry into the offseason, something that as we work into bullpens and deeper the throwing programming and really getting off the slope, getting ready for spring training, that I can get back to sounding that mechanic and making sure that I’m very comfortable with it rolling into spring training. So that’s kind of where I’m at with the adjustments that I’ve made this offseason is that little mechanical tweak and just becoming as comfortable as I can with it.

On the Rockies’ offseason changes

For me, it’s it was almost an immediate effect, especially once the fall started getting rolling, and we were doing all these hires after hires, and then getting signings done, conversations were immediately starting to start[ing] to have, started to form ideas, throw things around, kind of create a rough outline of what we want to be looking at rolling into camp.

So the effect, for me, was almost immediate. And I’m very grateful for that kind of communication this organization, from front office to coaches down to players. It’s fantastic. It’s what we need if we want to make sure this thing runs smoothly and have success.

On resetting after 2025

Part of that reset, I think, is the turnover of front office, the turnover of [the] majority of our coaching staff — that’s part of the reset. I think everyone is very individual when it comes to their own kind of reset button, after a really tough season of how to flip that switch to, like Hunter said, not let that stuff happen again. We’re all individual in how we go about that in the offseason, whether it’s going on vacation, just focusing on your work at hand, whatever it may be, we were all we’re all different that way.

But I think part of that reset is getting this new regime in and getting a brand new direction, new ideas. Everything that encompasses into what we’re trying to do is kind of our reset button. And it’s exciting to start moving forward now, two weeks away from camp, and we’re getting ready to do the things that we’ve been talking about for the past couple months. And it’s exciting.

On signing Michael Lorenzen

I’ve been able to talk to Lorenzen quite a bit. Whenever we got these free-agent signsings that we got or trades, Schaeff has made sure to send me their contact information, and I make sure to immediately reach out to them, “Welcome to the Rockies” and start picking their brain and let them know that we’re all in this together.

But Lorenzen, he’s obviously very outspoken about his intelligence in the game and how much he wants to dive into pitching at Coors Field and pitching at altitude and creating that formula.

I’ve always been a firm believer that every pitcher here is going to create their own formula of success at altitude. But I’m very interested to continue to talk to Lorenzen about that and see his ideas just because he is so invested in the analytics of pitching and how the body moves, and how you can move your hand in space, stuff like that. He’s extremely intelligent, so he’s going to be a big help for, I think, pitchers across the board in our organization, and especially at the big-league level.

On working with the new coaching staff

We’ve been having a lot of conversations — I won’t get too in-depth with them, but it’s constant communications. It’s conversations about ideas, questions: “Why are we doing this?” “What can we possibly be doing?” And there’s some funky, wacky ideas that have been thrown around in these conversations from the pitching side.

But you know what? It’s also extremely refreshing to hear those kind of ideas and those thought processes, because it creates excitement inside the clubhouse to go out and try those and see if they work. If they fail, so what? You can move on to the next thing that you want to try out and try and find success that way. But Alon [Leichman] and Gabe [Ribas] have been fantastic with their communication. Matt [Daniels] being down at Salt River for the past couple of weeks has been great watching the guys who have been down there throwing.

I keep saying, but it’s kind of like a breath of fresh air getting these new ideas, these new thought processes in here,

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