Denver has a reputation for being kind to baseball hitters, but the metro area also has produced some quality pitchers.
Two of them will be in action Wednesday afternoon when the Toronto Blue Jays and Colorado Rockies wrap up their three-game series. Toronto right-hander Kevin Gausman (7-8, 3.99 ERA) will face off against Colorado left-hander Kyle Freeland (2-11, 5.26) in a matchup of local stars.
The Blue Jays, who recorded a 10-4 win on Tuesday night, have a chance for a sweep Wednesday in a game in which both teams will be short-handed.
Toronto outfielder Joey Loperfido left Tuesday night’s game after getting hit with a pitch on the right knee. The Rockies, in turn, lost Orlando Arcia (right elbow injury) and Thairo Estrada (right hamstring) with injuries on Tuesday.
“I would imagine both of them can’t play (Wednesday),” Colorado interim manager Warren Schaeffer said.
X-rays on Loperfido’s knee were negative, and Blue Jays manager John Schneider called it a “right knee contusion.”
Gausman was a star pitcher and hitter at Grandview High School in Aurora, a suburb east of Denver. He was a first-round pick by Baltimore in the 2012 draft and became a full-time starter for the Orioles in 2014. He has won 109 games over 13 major league seasons.
Gausman didn’t face his hometown team until he was in his seventh season, when he was pitching for the Atlanta Braves. He is 2-2 with a 5.36 ERA in eight career starts against the Rockies and 2-1 with a 3.95 ERA in five starts at Coors Field.
“It’s just different here. It really is,” Gausman, 34, told The Denver Gazette on Tuesday. “And it’s not necessarily the pitching and the pitch metrics and stuff, but just how you feel. It takes a couple of days.
“If you know anything about Colorado baseball, it hasn’t always been a hotbed here. I do think the game is a lot better here than it was when I was in high school.”
Freeland, like Gausman, was highly touted out of Thomas Jefferson High School in Denver and was a first-round pick of Colorado after pitching at the University of Evansville. He finished fourth in the NL Cy Young voting in 2018 but has struggled over the last few seasons.
Freeland has not had a winning season since going 17-7 in 2018 and didn’t earn his first win this year until June 4. He pitched better in July, when he was 1-2 with a 4.39 ERA, but he left his last start — last Wednesday at Cleveland — after three innings due to illness. He gave up two runs and three hits in his team’s 5-0 loss.
“Those situations (stink),” Freeland told the website Just Baseball about his early departure. “But being the person that I am and the teammate that I believe I am — I’m going to go out there no matter what, if I can stand on my two feet and attempt to give my team some innings to help the bullpen out, I’m going to go out and do it. It was a tough one.”
Freeland, who is 0-1 with a 7.20 ERA in his only start against Toronto, last season, became the longest-tenured Rockies player after Ryan McMahon was traded to the New York Yankees last month.
Freeland will need to tread lightly against Toronto’s Daulton Varsho, who is 5-for-10 with three homers and 10 RBIs in the series.
–Field Level Media
