Post-season continues to be painful for Price
KANSAS CITY— The Fates or The Furies: Something evil this way comes, always, for David Price.
If not evil, precisely, then helterskelter and head-smacking.
The career ace seems destined never to get a starter’s win in the post-season, not even on an afternoon of majestic pitching. Until.
It was a performance that should have been set in a gilt-edged frame.
Instead, it goes down in the annals of baseball as just one more loss for Price — seven straight now as a starter, tied with Randy Johnson for most consecutive defeats in the playoffs. Except Johnson, the Hall of Famer, won his next five, including a World Series Game 7.
Price, the glittery trade deadline acquisition, may not get another chance to throw in this American League Championship Series. So, if he retrieves his reputation from the mosh-pit of the post-season, it might have to be with another club.
With Price’s misfortunes on the mound — they didn’t begin with him but arose suddenly, in stunning game-changing fashion — Toronto abruptly reversed momentum, upside-downing from a 3-0 lead to a 6-3 defeat, now 2-in-the-hole as the series shifts to Toronto.
And yes, the Jays have been here before, down by a pair — in a best- of-five no less — responding in a sturdy manner to sashay past Texas. But on Saturday, the Royals did to the Jays what the Jays did to the Rangers in Game 5: Exploit jawdropping errors, even if there was no E-somebody on the official scoresheet.
In practice, it was E-Goins, Ryan, on a what-the-hell? misplay in which, essentially, a game that seemed safe as houses went up in flames.
Price, though downcast, would not let “Go-Go’’ wear it.
“No, I just gave up hits at the wrong time,” he insisted. “I felt good. It’s a very scrappy team, they put the ball in play. They continue to battle. That was a tough loss.”
Yet Price was cruising, nicked for only one hit — shortstop Alcides Escobar, who always goes to the plate hacking, slapped Price’s very first offering, a fastball away, to right field — until the fateful seventh inning rolled ’round.
Eighteen Royals in a row Price had then set down, as that frame opened, on an economy of pitches — a mere 66 through six frames, 49 for strikes.
He was in the groove, grinding through the K.C. lineup as if churning out sausages. Then — bloop — innocent little pop off the bat of Ben Zobrist that should have been an easy-peasy out. Except Goins, ranging far to his left got all miscommunication — or non-communication — tangled up with Jose Bautista. Bautista backed off, Goins dropped on his keester as if to get out of the way and the ball plopped on the grass.
An embarrassing episode but it shouldn’t have — and technically didn’t — cost Toronto a game they were leading comfortably, having scored thrice off Royals starter Yordano Ventura, playing textbook K.C. ball, stringing together singles and doubles.
Price maintains he wasn’t rattled by the non-catch shemozzle episode. Yet something went wildly out of kilter in that moment, as if the ballpark had tipped. Price got tagged for four hits as five runs — nick-nick-nick-nick-nick — came across the plate while a hometown crowd went bananas.
Thirty pitches Price threw in that plug-ugly inning and the Royals feasted on many of them.
Neither Price nor any other Jay saw it coming but that whole inning would have an eerie quality.
“I was staying in the moment. I wasn’t thinking about getting a win, I was thinking about getting the first guy out in the seventh and once he got on, getting the next guy out. I stay in the present. I don’t worry about what happened in the past.
“I felt good with all my pitches, just being able to mix it up, keep them off-balance. I made some big pitches through those first couple of innings. Just couldn’t do it there in the seventh.’’
Poor Goins had just vacated the spot, in the corridor outside the Toronto clubhouse, where Price holding court for this elbow-flying scrum. Goins had been standing up against the wall, waiting for media to enter, and it felt like all he needed was the blindfold.
“It was pretty much a routine fly ball . . . a play that I’ve made 100 times this season. I thought I heard something that I didn’t. And I backed off the ball. I should have been more aggressive. That started the rally.”
He stuck his glove up, standard semaphoring indicating to Bautista: I got it.
“I thought I heard an ‘I got it’ but it was nothing.”
Goins was clearly anxious to emphasize that point. He heard something that wasn’t there. The takeaway from that scrum conversation is that Goins and Bautista had already hashed this out and the veteran had made it clear that, nope, he never said a word. And further, nope, as Bautista testily told reporters later, he didn’t hear anybody else — a clever voice in the crowd, perchance — yell “got it’’ either.
“There’s video, you guys can watch it,’’ was the slugger’s repeated answer to queries about a possible call-off that never-was.
“There’s no confusion. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
“One small mistake opened the door for them. And they took full advantage.’’
Read between those lines, folks.