It’s too soon to know a lot about what’s coming in the MLB offseason, but at least this much is certain: David Price is going to make the big bucks.
If the free-agent-to-be has his way, it’ll be all the big bucks. Nobody should be surprised if Price demands a contract that begins with a two followed by eight zeroes. In a day and age when Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer own contracts worth north of $200 million, that’s not an absurd price tag for a No. 1 starter.
But a No. 1 starter with a postseason track record as ugly as Price’s? At the very least, that’s something worth discussing.
The 30-year-old lefty’s postseason struggles are very much in the ether, after all. After allowing eight earned runs in 10 innings in two outings for the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League Division Series, a man with a career 3.09 regular-season ERA now owns a 5.48 ERA over his last seven postseason appearances. In those, he’s struck out 35 while allowing 49 hits in 44.1 innings.
And now, the narrative of Price’s postseason struggles goes beyond just the numbers.
Knowing the alternative was to start him in a potential do-or-die Game 5, it raises one’s eyebrows that Blue Jays skipper John Gibbons used Price in relief to protect a sizable lead in Toronto’s 8-4 win over the Texas Rangers in Game 4 of the ALDS instead.
Why? As Alex Wong of Sports on Earth noted, Gibbons actually did have his reasons:
It wasn’t an easy decision. But I thought that was the best way to win the game. Regular season, that’s different. But this is a do-or-die game for us and I’ve seen it too many times in this business, especially with the kind of lineup and the way things were stacking up for us. Get a couple guys on a long ball, it’s a totally different game. There was still a lot of game left.
But as Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports argued, it appears Gibbons never had any intention to start Price in Game 5 anyway. The task was always likely to fall to wunderkind right-hander Marcus Stroman instead.
When Price sits down at assorted negotiating tables this winter, he’ll have plenty of selling points to cycle through. As of now, however, he won’t be able to say he can be trusted beyond a shadow of a doubt in October.
But the big question, of course, is whether that should even matter.
For Price and his representatives, it obviously won’t matter. What he’s done in the regular season will matter, and that will be their ticket to pursue perhaps the richest contract ever for a starting pitcher.
You can take it from Tim Dierkes of MLB Trade Rumors:
Even back in February, $200MM (sans deferred money) was getting tossed around in regard to Price. The 30-year-old was traded to the Blue Jays on July 30th and his risen to the occasion, somehow pitching even better for his new team. The goal is now clear: exceed the seven-year, $215MM extension Clayton Kershaw signed with the Dodgers in January 2014…
All this adds up. Regardless of whether you prefer Baseball-Reference.com or FanGraphs WAR, Price has been one of the 10 most valuable pitchers in MLB since 2010. And before the postseason got in the way, he was indeed finishing 2015 on a strong note with a 2.30 ERA in 11 starts in Toronto.
As a bonus, the trade that sent him to Toronto from the Detroit Tigers barred Price from getting a qualifying offer. With no ties to draft-pick compensation to go along with his outstanding track record, he’ll have no issue standing apart from the other ace pitchers—Johnny Cueto, Jordan Zimmermann and presumably Zack Greinke—who are due to hit the open market.
And to be sure, what’s happened with Price in the postseason isn’t going to limit interest in him. He’s going to be one of the market’s hottest commodities, if not the hottest commodity.
But if the asking price is going to be north of $200 million, it will behoove teams to consider all factors. And though Price’s postseason struggles shouldn’t be a big factor, interested suitors shouldn’t write them off either.
After all, it’s safe to assume Price’s big-money contract will go the way of virtually all big-money contracts for players on the wrong side of 30: He’ll live up to it in the early portion and then slip into the twilight of his career and become drastically overpaid. That’s how these things usually work.
If so, the idea for prospective suitors will be to get the most out of that early portion. Riding Price to a postseason berth or two would be a good way to do that. Riding him all the way to a World Series or two would be even better.
And therein lies the big question: Are Price’s postseason struggles merely the result of bad luck or something tangible that could keep biting him in future postseasons?
Regarding the first possibility, there’s a simple argument to make about that being the case. We’ll leave that to Ted Berg of USA Today:
To bolster this point, it’s not as if Price has featured inferior stuff in the postseason.
As Brooks Baseball can show, his pitch selection and velocity in the postseason since 2010 pretty much reflect his pitch selection and velocity in the regular season. Also, Price hasn’t been uncharacteristically wild in the postseason. He’s walked only 3.7 percent of the batters he’s faced in the postseason since 2010, which is about as good as it gets for any pitcher.
In light of all this, an explanation for Price’s postseason struggles isn’t readily apparent. That would seem to lend credence to the notion that he’s simply been plagued by small-sample-size bad luck.
However, there is one subtle red flag.
Looking at the two appearances Price has made in the ALDS, it’s notable that seven of the eight runs he’s allowed have come on five RBI hits. Of those, four have come early in the count. Rougned Odor’s solo homer in Game 1 and Elvis Andrus’ RBI single in Game 4 came on the first pitch. Adrian Beltre’s RBI single in Game 1 came on an 0-1 pitch. Robinson Chirinos’ two-run homer in Game 1 came on a 1-0 pitch.
Coincidence? Not really.
Getting killed early in the count has been an issue for Price in his last seven postseason outings. Per Baseball Savant, he’s been hit to the tune of a .360 average and a .720 slugging percentage on 0-0, 0-1 and 1-0 pitches. That’s compared to .246 and .373 in all other counts.
With context, that looks like it could be small-sample-size noise. But it’s not. Getting killed early in the count has also been an issue for Price in the regular season over the last six years. He’s served up a .305 average and .476 slugging percentage on 0-0, 0-1 and 1-0 counts and a .205 average and .310 slugging percentage on all other counts.
So, rather than bad luck, Price’s postseason struggles can actually be attributed to a pre-existing weakness that has been magnified in the postseason.
And this isn’t the biggest surprise. Price has a big arm and fantastic command, but his approach isn’t terribly complicated. He gets by on attacking hitters in the strike zone to get ahead, and it’s really only when he has two strikes that he’ll look to get hitters to expand. It makes perfect sense that hitters who are aggressive against him would be the ones who find the most success.
The good news, such as it is, is there’s only a small difference between the early-count aggressiveness against Price in the regular season and in the postseason. In the regular season between 2010 and 2015, hitters have swung at 36.2 percent of his 0-0, 0-1 and 1-0 pitches. In the postseason, that number has only increased to 36.4 percent.
Even still, there is something to be said about the postseason being a different animal from the regular season when it comes to aggressiveness. As Drew Fairservice noted at Fox Sports last year, hitters have been getting increasingly aggressive in the postseason ever since, you guessed it, 2010. For a guy with early-count issues such as Price, that might as well be a death sentence.
So, a $200 million contract?
Frankly, that might be a stretch to begin with in a market that’s going to be watered down by a surplus of quality pitching. As much or more than anything else, bad timing could be what bars Price from getting the mega-rich contract he’ll be seeking.
If Price does find a $200 million deal, whichever team gives it to him will be making a major roll of the dice. Deals that large are risky gambles regardless of the context. But given that his postseason struggles stem from more than just bad luck, a $200 million deal for him would have another layer of risk on top of it.
This is how the big picture is looking now, anyway. But if the Blue Jays win Game 5 on Wednesday and advance to the American League Championship Series, Price will get his chances to make revisions.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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