Kyle Freeland will take the mound for the Colorado Rockies on Thursday night with a lot on his mind and a chip on his shoulder.

As the Rockies open a four-game series in San Francisco against the surprising Giants, a team that is wildly exceeding preseason expectations and hovering near the top of the National League West, Freeland will be trying to get himself and his team on track.

Freeland is 0-4 on the season while his team limps into San Francisco with a 5-25 record. Thursday’s start will mark his 207th in a Rockies uniform, setting a franchise record in the category. Freeland, however, won’t be celebrating any personal milestones while the franchise that he grew up rooting for finds itself in dire straits in the standings.

To Freeland, a Denver native, this start to the 2025 season is something he describes as “personal” and weighing on him.

“That’s one thing I have to make sure that I’m not putting any more pressure on myself, being in the situation that I’m in,” Freeland said. “I want to win with this club. I want to win for my city. I want to win with this group of guys, and it’s tough right now. It seems like we really don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, but we have to keep on going and keep everyone together.”

Freeland was a part of Colorado’s last postseason run in 2018 and has been a part of some of the highs and now lows of the franchise. Every time he takes the mound, he takes representations of Colorado with him thanks to his tattoos that include a Columbine flower as well as the numbers 303 and 5280. One of his tattoos reads, “My city told me they needed me, so I’m grindin’ for that.”

His city does need him right now, as does his franchise.

Freeland feels the weight of that. He’s not impervious to what’s being said on social media and on the local and national news. He doesn’t just want to win. He wants to get the Rockies back to respectability.

It’s part of being a veteran in a clubhouse filled with players still trying to establish themselves at baseball’s highest level, and the 31-year-old Freeland knows leadership is as important right now as any pitch he will throw against the Giants.

“A lot of young guys look to myself, Mac (Ryan McMahon), (German) Marquez, TK (Tyler Kinley) and Senza (Antonio Senzatela) as veterans, and they want to see a strong head,” Freeland said. “They want to see someone who is going out there with confidence every single time so they can be behind you.

“But it’s tough. I know when everyone is struggling, it’s hard to keep that same mentality every single day. But that’s what those of us as leaders have to do. We have to show that, even when things are bad, we still have to go.”

Freeland will walk out to the mound at Oracle Park on Thursday night looking to help the Rockies snap a 13-game road losing streak. He will face a Giants team that went 7-0 last season against Colorado at home and will roll out future Hall of Famer Justin Verlander as Thursday’s starting pitcher.

Pressure? Freeland shrugs off any hint of that as the calendar turns to May and his team looks to put a horrid April in the rearview mirror.

“I think what we need to do is that we need to try and take the pressure off ourselves,” Freeland said. “I think we’re applying too much pressure seeing how we started this season and how bad it’s gone. Some of us are applying more pressure than needed.

“Going into Thursday, it’s going to be the same mentality for me. I’m going to go out expecting to win, expecting to go deep into a game and start a series off right getting a win for the guys.”

Getting his first win of the season Thursday would be great, but Freeland is focused on the bigger picture. That’s getting the Rockies back on track and out of the national spotlight after a historically bad start to the season.

“We have a lot of talent in this clubhouse, and we have a lot of skills,” Freeland said. “We have guys who want to win. We just have to put it together, and we’re not doing that right now.”