Coming off the worst start of his major league career against the Diamondbacks last weekend — an eight-run shellacking in which he yielded three homers — Kyle Freeland needed a bounce-back outing.
What he delivered Thursday against the Giants was somewhere in between. The southpaw pitched five innings, giving up five runs (three earned) on four walks and four hits. It certainly wasn’t Cy Young-caliber as Freeland was so often last season, but it showed promise of progression in certain aspects.
“I felt better about things, and about my mechanics and how my pitches were working,” Freeland said.