A part of the process for finding intriguing players to dive into for the upcoming installments of the buy or sell series involves various leaderboards. One Rockies pitcher popped up when sorting by the past 30 days in Kyle Freeland, and he is performing better in recent weeks. In 15-team leagues, it’s hard to find helpful starting pitchers without some concerns. With James Kaprielian, he battled injuries in the past, so some fantasy managers didn’t have him on their draft radars, including me.
Both Kaprielian and Freeland ended up as likely waiver wire pickups with an NFBC ADP past pick 700. Can we trust another Rockies’ starting pitcher? What’s going on with Kaprielian? We’ll dig into their underlying metrics to decide to buy or sell what’s going on with Freeland and Kaprielian.
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Buy or Sell – A Less Rocky Kyle Freeland & James Kaprielian is Healthy
Kyle Freeland (SP – COL)
After Kyle Freeland’s 2018 season, where he finished with a 2.85 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 20.5% strikeout rate, and 8.3% walk rate in 202 1/3 innings, he looked dreadful in 2019 and 2020. During the previous two seasons (2019-2020), Freeland had a 5.76 ERA, 1.51 WHIP, 16.1% strikeout rate, and 8% walk rate in 175 innings pitched. As with any player, Freeland battled injuries and ran into some natural struggles and misfortune evidenced by a .307 BABIP, 67.9% LOB%, and 19.8% HR/FB%. Although the .307 BABIP isn’t that high, the other surface stats explain part of the struggles.
When scrolling through the waiver wire, I’ll often sort by past 14 or 30 days to see what’s going on with certain hitters and pitchers. A Rockies starting pitcher popped up in Kyle Freeland. Over the past month since June 22, Freeland boasts a 2.06 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, 22.1% strikeout rate, and 5.1% walk rate in 35 innings pitched. Freeland’s .271 BABIP and 84.3% LOB% during this stretch look positive plus the low 5.6% HR/FB%.
In his past three starts, Freeland faced the Dodgers twice and Padres once with two of those games away from Coors Field. However, the Padres and Dodgers have two of the better offenses when fully healthy.
Overall in 2021, Freeland has a 4.85 ERA, 1.47 WHIP, 17.4% strikeout rate, and 7.4% walk rate. Even his .315 BABIP and 77.6% LOB% make us think that his ratios may regress a bit. Add in Freeland’s 17.7% HR/FB%, and he is pitching better recently with some fortune in his favor. On the surface, Freeland likely took a few starts to ramp up after his delayed start to the 2021 season.
Freeland’s Pitch Mix & Results
Throughout Kyle Freeland’s career, he mixes up five different pitches in the four-seamer, slider, changeup, curveball, and sinker, with varying pitch percentages.
The graph above shows the varying pitch mixes throughout Freeland’s career, with a general trend of lowering the four-seamer usage. Let’s look at the past two seasons plus Freeland’s 2018 season, which ended as a career-best so far.
Although there is a ton of data on here, I highlight a few sections to note. Kyle Freeland is pounding the zone with the four-seamer and pitching to contact. However, Freeland’s slider and changeup haven’t performed well, which worries us a bit since they’re two of his main secondary pitches. One minor note – FanGraphs labels Freeland’s breaking pitch as a cutter, with Baseball Savant noting it’s a slider.
It’s hard to trust a Rockies starting pitcher, but Jon Gray and Germán Marquez remind us that success is possible. In recent weeks, Freeland has pitched well too. In 2021, Freeland is pitching slightly better at home with a 4.56 ERA and a 5.10 ERA away from Coors Field. Take this data with a grain of salt because it’s a small sample. Throughout Freeland’s career, he has a slightly lower ERA at 4.10 away from Coors compared to 4.37 at home.
Only one of Freeland’s pitches stands out from a pitch movement viewpoint. Freeland’s sinker boasts decent movement with 2.2 more inches of drop compared to the average sinker. His sinker elicits a healthy 57.7% ground ball rate, but hitters crush that pitch with a .686 SLG. That makes sense why he doesn’t throw that pitch often.
Should We Buy or Sell Freeland?
When looking at Kyle Freeland’s season-long numbers, it’s hard to feel a ton of excitement. However, as noted earlier, when we dig a little deeper into the game logs and recent success, Freeland provides us with reasons for optimism to buy into him as a streamer rather than sell and stay away. If Freeland can limit the BABIP in a BABIP-driven home ballpark, then we could see sustained success.
Unfortunately, Freeland’s 2018 season may end up as more of an outlier than the norm unless he moves away from Colorado. The ERA estimators don’t give us much hope either with a 5.35 FIP, 4.76 xFIP, and 4.85 xERA. Even with his pitch mix, it’s difficult to find many trends during his hot streak over the past month. Ride Freeland while he is pitching well since nothing looks too unsustainable in his profile in recent weeks.
James Kaprielian (SP – OAK)
Each week, I kept hearing and seeing James Kaprielian’s name pop up. Kaprielian battled injuries throughout his minor league career, with slightly more innings in 2019 and 2020 than he pitched so far in 2021. Before that, he missed 2017 and 2018 due to Tommy John surgery but dealt with some setbacks throughout his recovery process. Some other issues Kaprielian encountered include a lat strain and shoulder injury.
The former 16th overall pick back in 2015 has pitched well so far in 2021 with a 2.65 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, 26.4% strikeout rate, and 9.4% walk rate in 68 innings pitched. Kaprielian tossed six quality starts, with five of those coming with two or fewer earned runs. However, Kaprielian’s .241 BABIP allowed and 90.6% LOB% indicates his ratios may regress a bit.
Kaprielian’s Pitch Mix & Results
Given such a small MLB sample in 2020 of 3 2/3 innings pitched, it’s hard to compare to previous seasons. That said, we’ll note some of James Kaprielian’s plate discipline and pitch mix data. Kaprielien uses the four-seamer a bunch at 52.2%, with the changeup (18.3%) and slider (17.3%) as his two other primary pitches. He sprinkles in a curveball (7.1%) and sinker (5.1%) as well.
Interestingly, Kaprielian’s four-seamer, changeup, and slider all have a double-digit swinging-strike rate. He uses the changeup as a weapon to lefties, which he has thrown 149 times out of 202 total changeups thrown. The changeup also has 5.8 more inches of drop than the average changeup, which should help miss bats. Although Kaprielian’s changeup only elicits a 25.8% whiff rate, it results in a higher ground ball rate at 57.6%. Kaprielian pounds the zone with the four-seamer with a zone rate of 55.8%.
Should We Buy or Sell James Kaprielian?
As a flyball (45.5%) pitcher, James Kaprielian has kept a reasonable 12.5% HR/FB%. That should play well in a home ballpark like the beautiful Oakland Coliseum with a 0.87 home run park factor (bottom-7) per EV Analytics. We expect Kaprielian’s ratios to regress, evidenced by his .241 BABIP allowed and 90.6% LOB%.
Even Kaprielian’s ERA estimators indicate that his ERA will rise in the high 3.00’s to low 4.00’s. Currently, Kaprielian has a 4.15 FIP, 4.34 xFIP, and 3.73 xERA. That’s not dreadful by any means, so Kaprielian still holds value in a range of pitchers above some streamers, especially with the current success. However, the question remains – how many more innings will Kaprielian pitch given the injury history and limited innings in the minors? It’s likely that the Athletics monitor Kaprielian’s workload over the coming months as they make a push for the playoffs.
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