James Kaprielian had been looking forward to Friday night’s start, his first at Yankee Stadium during his 27-year-old rookie season, hoping to give his former team a chance to see what they were missing.
The former first round draft pick certainly gave the Yanks a glimpse of what could have been in their rotation, tossing 5.2 innings and striking out seven while allowing three runs in a 5-3 win for Oakland in the series opener.
It wasn’t dominance from Kaprielian, but it was enough to keep the division-leading A’s in position to win on the road, and was enough to keep his ERA at a very respectable 2.84.
“He looked pretty good,” DJ LeMahieu said. “Slider seemed to get a lot of swing and misses, a couple changeups, got a couple good swings, but I guess he looked pretty good.”
Kaprielian was burned by two mistakes, a home run to LeMahieu and another by Rougned Odor, but still put together the outing that the Yanks would have loved to see from their own side, before Kaprielian was dealt to Oakland in 2017 for Sonny Gray.
“I thought he was tough,” Aaron Boone said. “We didn’t mount a whole lot against him. Obviously the two home runs gave us the lead against him, so we were able to score against him, which was nice, but I thought he was pretty sharp. Featured both secondary pitches, the slider, but that changeup was dancing around too, and a good fastball to the edges.”
By the time Kaprielian was traded, along with prospects Jorge Mateo and Dustin Fowler, he was the Yanks’ top pitching prospect in the early stages of recovery from Tommy John surgery. Given Gray’s struggles in New York and the ineffectiveness of the prospects Oakland got back in return (Mateo was later traded to the Padres for a player to be named later, and Fowler has a .434 OPS with the Pirates this year), the deal seemed like a wash, but finally healthy, Kaprielian is giving the Yanks a glimpse of what could have been.
“I thought overall, he threw the ball pretty well against us,” Boone said. “Considering to have three runs against him was enough at the time to give us the lead.”
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