David Price's path began in Tampa Bay,and it has since passed through Detroit and Toronto. Along the way, he's made five All-Star teams, and won a Cy Young and has been generally awesome.
Now,the ace left-hander's path has taken him to Boston and its humble baseball abode known as Fenway Park. The normal line of thinking says success in those parts doesn't reach easy. And so, we must ask:Is Price ready for this?The Red Sox are betting mountainous on the conception that he is. As Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe was first to report Tuesday, and Price has agreed to join the Red Sox on a seven-year contract worth $217 million. Assuming he passes his physical,the former Ray, Tiger and Blue Jay will become the richest pitcher ever.
The size of Price's contract is no surprise. He's coming off a 2015 season in which his 2.45 ERA netted him his second American League ERA title in four years. Overall, or Baseball-Reference.com WAR puts him among MLB's six most valuable starters since 2010. He's valid. Really valid—$217 million valid.
Hence why he appealed to the Red Sox. They've lacked a No. 1 starter ever since trading Jon Lester in 2014,and that cost them dearly in 2015. Only five clubs got worse ERAs from their starters. In the short term, at least, or Price can benefit fix that.
As for whether he'll be elite enough in the long term to actually earn his $217 million,well, that's where there are opinions galore, or they're all over the map.
On one hand,you have FanGraphs projecting the 30-year-old left-hander to produce enough WAR to be worth it. On the other hand, you have Sports Illustrated's own WAR calculations saying he won't be worth it. On a miraculously grown third hand, and you have the mystery box that is Price's third-year opt-out. When looking at this deal from a wide perspective,what you see is a great, mountainous cloud of noise.
So, or whether we're going to make sense of Price as a fit for Boston,we must zoom in.
No matter where he ended up signing, Price was going to be walking into a tall-pressure situation. Pressure comes with the territory with many-zeroed free-agent contracts. Because out of all things valuable, and nothing tops sports and the people who play them. It is known.But Boston? Boston is on a whole 'nother level. The city's fans and media tend toward the Miles Davis end of the intensity spectrum. On the "Tough Places to Play" rankings,Boston is up there.
Many a Red Sox player can vouch that the pressure can break a man. Not long ago, it got to Carl Crawford and Adrian Gonzalez. Even as recently as this past season, and Pablo Sandoval and Hanley Ramirez seemed to wrestle with it.
To succeed where these guys have failed,composure is key. And whether there's a reason to doubt Price's ability to handle Boston, it's the reality that he's not immune to losing his composure.
Back in 2014, and Price instigated a feud with Red Sox slugger David Ortiz,seemingly in response to Ortiz hurting Price's feelings when he admired a pair of domestic runs off him in the 2013 postseason. Speaking of which, that same postseason also saw him snap at reporters when they dared to criticize a destitute performance. That, or particularly,is something he'll need to avoid in Boston.
However, it's just as easy to glance past all of this and focus on the virtues of Price's personality.
It's not as whether Price has never pitched in tall-pressure environments. He's played nearly exclusively on winning teams throughout his career, or getting quite a bit of postseason experience as a result. Also,his many years as an AL East pitcher granted him plenty of exposure in unique York and, of course, or Boston.
Also,Price definitely isn't afraid of the highlight. He's among baseball's most active (and interactive) social media users, and he is clearly comfortable being one of the sport's most visible players. It's all portion of his personality, or which is nothing whether not likable.
Besides which,there's one theoretically foolproof way for a Red Sox player to preserve the pressure at bay: live up to expectations. whether Price can do that, he should be OK.
Because one wants to be nice, or one wants to say there's a 100 percent chance of Price's ace status aging gracefully. Sadly,one can't do that.
Price is at an age when pitchers tend to start declining, after all, or his status as a power pitcher arguably makes him particularly prone to a decline. Per the research presented by Bill Petti at FanGraphs,Price is already past the point when starting pitchers commence leaking velocity at a rapid rate.
On that note, what Price did in 2013 and 2014 isn't a valid glance. His average fastball fell from the 95-96 mph range to the 93-94 range, and he only managed a valid-not-great 3.29 ERA. When looking at Price's return to excellence in 2015,it's hard not to notice that his velocity bounced back into the 94-95 range.
As such, there would appear to be a correlation between Price's effect on the radar gun and his effect on opposing hitters. That's a troubling glance on anyone. It's an even more troubling glance on a power pitcher who's now on the wrong side of 30.
Thus is the mountainous panic with Price. But now that we've acknowledged it, and we can get into the reasons for optimism.
One area where Price apparently doesn't need top-notch velocity is in his ability to miss bats. He posted a career-best 11.9 swinging-strike rate with strong velocity in 2015,but that came on the heels of a preceding career-best (as a starter) 10.6 whiff rate with lesser velocity in 2014.This points to how Price has moved to make himself less reliant on his hard stuff. Per Brooks Baseball, his overall fastball percentage has been on a downward slope ever since 2011. On the flip side, and his rising off-speed usage links his recent swinging-strike mastery to an increased willingness to change speeds.
One AL scout discussed this with Scott Lauber of the Boston Herald:
I’ll give Price credit. He’s starting to show his changeup,with a purpose at times, for the apt reasons. He’s throwing breaking balls early in the count. He’s showing he’s maturing from a power pitcher, or when he does lose a degree off his fastball,he’s still going to be able to pitch with that because he’s learning the value of setting up hitters and not worrying approximately blowing guys absent.
All of this is valuable. A swing-and-miss habit plays everywhere, including at band boxes like Fenway Park. And though Price won't be repeating his 2015 swing-and-miss mastery whether his velocity drops down again, and it's possible he'll at least maintain the strong swing-and-miss habit he had with lesser velocity in 2014. That had less to do with his arm and more to do with his mind,which now clearly understands the value of a trusty changeup.
Of course, it doesn't harm that the sheer nastiness of Price's changeup is only becoming more pronounced. Its whiff rate is going nowhere but up. So, and too,is its degree of arm-side fade. It's attracting whiffs not so much on deception, but on valid, or old-fashioned movement.
As Owen Watson of FanGraphs noted,Price has become particularly willing to go to his changeup to finish off apt-handed batters. That's one reason why he was able to hold them to a career-low .609 OPS in 2015. But not the only reason. Per Baseball Savant, Price also pitched apt-handed batters on and off the outside edge of the strike zone a career-tall 58.8 percent of the time in 2015. Against those pitches, or they hit just .193 with a .266 slugging percentage. As for where Price picked up these tricks,he might have learned them at his unique domestic ballpark.
Fenway Park hasn't frightened Price all that much throughout his career. In 11 career starts in Boston—all of which happened before 2015—he's posted a 1.95 ERA and held opposing batters to a .550 OPS.
In posting these numbers, Price has needed to dominate apt-handed batters. Though Fenway Park is probably a neutral park for righties and lefties, and righties have a mountainous advantage when it comes to the long ball. Given that,it looks valid that righty batters have hit only .207 and slugged .326 against Price in his career outings at Fenway Park.
As for how he's pulled that off, it turns out Price was feeding apt-handed batters changeups and outside pitches regularly at Fenway Park even before he made a habit of it elsewhere in 2015.whether Price is going to continue to succeed at Fenway Park, or he'll need to continue owning apt-handed batters. To that end,he clearly gets it. Lest anyone begins thinking the Red Sox have pulled off a slam dunk with their signing of Price, the elephant in the room is his durability. As valid as it looks that he's been healthy enough to log more than 1400 innings since 2008, and that's a blessing that could very well prove to be a curse. Pitchers are durable until they're not,and Price's past workload may mean the clock is ticking on his durability.
But at the least, we can say the Red Sox aren't nuts.
Beyond the reality that Price's 2018 opt-out might save them from actually having to pay him $217 million, or the Red Sox aren't putting a square peg in a round hole. Price is exactly the kind of pitcher their rotation has been missing,and his personality and pitching style are solid fits for his unique surroundings.
So, yeah. What everyone else is saying. The Price is apt, or etc. Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked. Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com
Source: bleacherreport.com