Hollow talk won’t make Price right
ANAHEIM, Calif. — As subpar outings become routine for supposed Red Sox ace David Price, so too have hollow explanations.
He is not executing. This is Price’s go-to phrase, one that illuminates nothing at all except the obvious — the outcome everyone sees.
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Last night at Angel Stadium was an exception. His results were as good as any this season: eight shutout innings in a tough 2-1 loss to the Angels, working with no margin for error.
Maybe this is a turning point. Either way, Price hasn’t made his journey this season easy to understand.
The 30-year-old lefty has been asked more than once whether he believes his problems are mechanical or mental.
“Honestly, I don’t think it’s either one of those,” Price said after Saturday’s start against Minnesota. “It’s me going out there and making pitches. That’s what I’ve done for a long time now. It’s what I haven’t done this year. That’s why this year has been the way it has been.” That’s not an answer. Asked on July 1 to elaborate what the problem could be, if neither mental nor mechanical, Price did not.
“A lot of season left,” he said. “I’m not down. I still got confidence out there. I know everything’s going to turn.”
But if you miss a spot, what’s going on?
“I’m not perfect, you know?” Price said. “Nobody’s out there hitting every single spot. When you do, if you give up that hit or whatever it is, it’s part of it. Sometimes it’s taken, sometimes it’s a foul ball and sometimes it’s hit for an out. That’s just not the way it’s going right now. I’ll get through it.” A month later, he hasn’t. So much seems to come down to the fastball. Through last year’s playoffs, Price held opponents to a .219 average on his fourseamer lifetime with a .333 slugging percentage, per BrooksBaseball.net. The average on balls in play was .295. This year? A .279 average, .488 slugging percentage and .412 average on balls in play entering last night.
The weird thing is he’s getting a lot of swings and misses on the heater, a career-high 28.57 percent. Yet he just can’t spot it.
Price hasn’t fallen into the public trap that Clay Buchholz did, a tone-deaf pit of postgame self-evaluations. He’s been hard on himself. But, in a matter of months, he also appears to have closed himself off, maybe smartly, but probably to an extreme.
When Price’s ERA reached a career-high 6.75 in New York on May 7, he stood at his locker for 10 minutes the next day, explaining what he thought was wrong. This was the day Price said Dustin Pedroia helped him realize some mechanical issues. Price was detailed about how his knee and hands should be tied together like a string, moving in sync.
But what everyone cares about most are results, not commentary.
Suggesting in May he figured something out came with risk: Price pitched well for a stretch, but, yeesh, what if he hadn’t?
As speculation: Maybe Price decided it does no good to get into the nitty gritty publicly. Presumably, too, if Price actually knew what the heck was wrong, he’d have a solution.
But no amount of hedging precludes him from offering insight into what is undoubtedly a tiring behind-thescenes search, one that the public would be pleased to better understand.
“I don’t think that it’s mental other than he does expect an awful lot of himself,” pitching coach Carl Willis said this week. “You’ve heard him say, ‘If somebody told me they’d give me eight innings and three runs, I wouldn’t take it.’ Well, that tells you what his expectations are. There’s nothing physical. I mean, honestly, we’ve seen his velocity get back to his type of velocity and it’s been more I think a matter of command. And then being able to put guys away when he gets into that position, which comes along with it.”
Price’s fastball entered last night averaging 94.12 mph this month, per BrooksBaseball.net. On July 17, he averaged 95.22. He was steadily in the 95 mph range last year.
But velocity isn’t the focal point at the moment. The clues the Red Sox are giving as to what may actually be wrong with Price sound just like a continuation of what he discussed in May: staying in sync.
“We’re looking at video,” Willis said. “A lot of it with pitchers is going off what they feel, what they feel with their body. And more times than not it’s not so much their arms as much as it is their lower half. And how they get themselves in position to deliver the ball. It’s a matter of getting everything synced up, timing in the delivery to allow him to execute those pitches.”
Manager John Farrell said something similar on SiriusXM’s MLB Network Radio this week.
“To boil it down and probably be as succinct as possible, it’s a matter of just creating consistent downhill plane through the zone,” Farrell said. “There’s been a little of a drop-step added . . . and David was bringing this (to us). He felt like he was a little bit too static over the rubber, where he was not creating the rhythm or momentum (he needs).
“It’s trying to maintain the balance over the rubber to execute downhill, and he went through a seven-week period where that was very good.”
But you understood all that implicitly when Price said he wasn’t executing, didn’t you?