The Toronto Blue Jays last night dropped their series opener to the Boston Red Sox 7-3 as Yusei Kikuchi gave up four home runs and five earned runs on seven hits suffering the loss to drop to 4-6 on the year; he did however not issue a walk and struck out seven. The Blue Jays in the loss got solo home runs from Davis Schneider and Justin Turner; Turner finished the game going 2-3 with two runs scored, an RBI, and a walk against his former team. The two will play the middle game of their three-game series today as Chris Bassitt goes for the Blue Jays and he will face off against Tanner Houck for the Red Sox. Today the Blue Jays signed a former top prospect in the Yankees system James Kaprielian to a minor league deal, he will report to Triple-A Buffalo.
RHP – James Kaprielian
Kaprielian was drafted by the Yankees with the 16th overall pick. In 2017 he was the 87th ranked prospect by Baseball America and the 58th prospect by MLB Pipeline. He would be traded to the Oakland A’s as a part of the Sonny Gray trade in July of 2017. He made his debut in 2020 appearing in two games posting a 7.36 ERA, a 9.74 FIP, a 1.63 WHIP, and four strikeouts in 3.2 innings. In 2021 he turned out a solid season making 24 appearances with 21 of those coming as starts going 8-5 with a 4.07 ERA, a 4.33 FIP, a 1.22 WHIP, and 123 strikeouts in 119.1 innings. In 2022 he made 26 starts going 5-9 with a 4.23 ERA, a 4.63 FIP, a 1.34 WHIP, and 98 strikeouts in 134 innings. Last season he made 14 appearances with 11 of those coming as starts going 2-6 with a 6.34 ERA, a 5.07 FIP, a 1.59 WHIP, and 57 strikeouts in 61 innings.
Wrap Up
The Blue Jays current rotation is Jose Berrios, Yusei Kikuchi, Chris Bassitt, and Kevin Gausman. They’ve run into issues at the fifth spot in the rotation with Alek Manoah going down for the season with UCL surgery, Bowden Francis has struggled in three starts, top prospect Ricky Tiedemann is on the injured list, and Yariel Rodriguez has been hurt, and will likely be back this weekend. If Kaprielian can return to form Toronto may have a nice piece to add for the second half.
