One of my favorite parts of postseason baseball, aside from the pure insanity it brings to the table each and every day, is that every October one player seems to take the spotlight and run with it. At the very least, a small group of teammates (like the Astros’ bash brothers last year) steals the nation’s hearts and minds. The most noteworthy in recent memory, of course, would be Madison Bumgarner. Obviously, it’s way too early to start talking about this for the 2018 postseason. We’ve played one game! Still, if we wanted to track a leader in the clubhouse for this fake honor, it’s pretty clear Kyle Freeland would be the man. For a large chunk of the baseball-watching community, Tuesday was their introduction to Colorado’s hometown ace.
Tuesday was your introduction to Kyle Freeland
Wednesday’s Say Hey, Baseball includes Kyle Freeland’s introduction to the national baseball landscape, Tony Wolter’s heroics and a troublesome DOJ investigation.
Photo by Joe Mahoney/Getty Images
It’s not very often we get to talk about a dominant Rockies pitcher, as it’s been the elusive piece they’ve been searching for for years. This year, in a bizarre turn of events, they’re actually built on the backs of their pitchers with the offense just stepping up when needed. And leading that group of pitchers all year has undoubtedly been Freeland. Throwing in a market like Denver holds down a player’s star in the first place, at least to start their career, but Freeland is coming off an incredible regular season in which he pitched to a 164 ERA+. In fact, he’s a sneaky Cy Young candidate, or at least a candidate in the race for second place
Clearly it’s too early to talk about Freeland as a big-game pitcher in the same vein as other lefties like Bumgarner and Jon Lester, but that this outing on short rest in which he dominated one of the most intimidating lineups in baseball came against Lester is some poetic stuff, man. Lester certainly didn’t look like a guy who was ready to pass on the torch -- he was tremendous as well -- but if he’s going to Freeland just might be that guy. The next four weeks are going to be filled with these kinds of performances and there will be a ton of players in the spotlight for one reason or another. At the end of the day, though, why can’t the biggest star be the hometown southpaw trying to win his favorite team their first championship?
- Grant tries his hand at ranking every single possible World Series matchup. Anti-Red Sox bias smh.
- Toy Wolters won the Wildcard Game on a go-ahead single in the 13th inning. What do you think the play of the day is going to be?
- Take in this incredible winner-take-all game from the estatic Rockies perspective.
- Or, if you prefer more gloom with your morning coffee, relive the night from the Cubs perspective.
- During that Rockies-Cubs game, Nolan Arenado and Javy Baez (arguably the two best players on the field) stopped for some in-game hugging. Grant breaks it down.
- Before the game started, MLB released a new postseason spot that is explicitly pro-bat flip. What a time to be alive.
- In less fun news, the Department of Justice is investigating MLBpractices with foreign-born players, and it seems the Dodgers are receiving the brunt of the heat for now.
- As we look ahead to Wednesday’s Wildcard Game between Oakland and New York, the big question has been who will start for the Yankees. That question was answered on Tuesday.
- Oakland, meanwhile, is going with a bullpen game, which is nice because they have one of the very best in all of baseball led by one of the very best relievers in the game.
- In a somewhat surprising turn of events out in Minnesota, Paul Molitor was dismissed from his role as the Twins manager on Tuesday.
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