Kansas City Royals at Colorado Rockies

If Sunday’s game was lefty Kyle Freeland's 251st and last start in a Rockies uniform, his first career complete game in an 8-1 victory over the Royals at Coors Field served the fitting bookend. If Freeland isn’t dealt by Monday’s 4 p.m. MT Trade Deadline, the performance could be the happy start of what’s likely a goodbye after 10 seasons with the Rockies, a proud son of the city and attendee of local Thomas Jefferson High School. Freeland’s career started on April 7, 2017, with six innings of one-run ball in a win over the Dodgers in the home opener. He braved understandable nerves then. This time he did it in the heat. The 99-degree first-pitch temperature was the second-highest in Rockies history -- behind only a 100-degree day on June 25, 2012. “We’ll see what happens tomorrow,” Freeland said after the Rockies' third sweep of the season. “Weird stuff happens around this time. But I went into the start as another one of my starts -- same level head, same thought process, game plan. But in the back of your head, there’s the thought that this could be my last here at home. In the next 24 hours, we’ll see how that unfolds.” Freeland’s previous three outings would have been quality starts had he not yielded a homer in the sixth inning each time – which either ended his outing short or pushed his line to four earned runs. This time, Freeland blew through that standard. In the deepest start of his career, Freeland -- at the end of a five-year, $64.5 million contract -- held the Royals to five hits with eight strikeouts -- one shy of his season high. It was the Rockies’ first complete game since Chad Kuhl’s on June 27, 2022, and there was no doubt that manager Warren Schaeffer was keen on letting Freeland achieve it. Last Sept. 5, Freeland fanned 10 Padres over eight innings. But Schaeffer went to Victor Vodnik to close the 3-0 victory. Freeland was one of the veterans Schaeffer went to when he took over the squad on an interim basis last May. The more he was around Freeland, the more he learned that finishing a game was important to him. The closest he came previously was on July 9, 2017, against the White Sox when he didn’t give up a hit until his last batter -- Melky Cabrera -- singled with one out in the ninth. “If that opportunity came around again, I was going to let him finish that thing,” Schaeffer said. “I couldn’t be happier. The boys are elated.”