Price loses control
Follows outburst with dud
NEW YORK — After last night’s game, everything was back to normal.
David Price took a shower, got dressed and walked calmly to the middle of the locker room where dozens of reporters, including the three who he cursed at the night before, were waiting. He gave thoughtful answers. There was no swearing. His voice stayed mellow.
Maybe the Red Sox can take solace in the peacefulness Price brought to that moment. But the mess from Wednesday still lingers. Manager John Farrell still wants to talk to him when they get back to Boston.
And then there’s Price’s performance on the mound.
Giving up four walks for just the third time in two Red Sox seasons, Price was torched for six runs in five innings as the Sox suffered an 9-1 loss to the New York Yankees.
“No, it was not tough at all to focus (last night),” Price said afterward. “This is baseball. Stuff happens. It happens to the best of the best. It happened to me (last night). I get to go home, see my family, see my kid, see my dogs, my mother-in-law — I’ll be ready in five days.”
Until he showed poise in his postgame interview, Price was not in control for the second straight night.
Wednesday he lost his temper in the Red Sox locker room.
Last night he came out and pitched similarly — with intense velocity and little command.
“I didn’t have a very good changeup,” he said. “It was kind of the opposite changeup I had in Baltimore. Felt good with my fastball on both sides of the plate. I just didn’t make enough pitches whenever I needed to.”
Farrell had called it “an important day to finish the road trip” earlier in the day.
But his club failed to respond both Wednesday and last night as the Sox dropped two of three in the series and fell three games behind the Yankees in the AL East, a halfgame ahead of the Baltimore Orioles for second place.
Regarding Farrell’s promised discussion about Price’s profanity-laden explosion on Wednesday, he pitcher said, “Then we’ll talk in Boston. He didn’t talk to me (yesterday). It was my start day so he let me be. I’ll talk to anybody who wants to talk about it in Boston.”
Don’t expect the position players to blame the pitchers any time soon. After Rick Porcello struggled in the 8-0 loss Wednesday, Mookie Betts said: “We’ve got to score runs. We’re never going to win with a zero.”
Well, the Red Sox managed to score one run last night, when Xander Bogaerts ran home on a passed ball.
But one run has done nothing for a team that is now 0-4 when scoring one run and 1-6 when scoring two.
Here’s a truth that Betts failed to mention: They’re not going to win when they give up nine, either.
After allowing just three hits in seven innings of one-run ball against the Orioles last week, Price was beginning to look like his elbow strain was a story to be forgotten.
Given that he’s throwing as hard as he did last night, the arm doesn’t seem to be the issue.
“I felt good,” he said. “I felt really good.”
Maybe it was just a rough game. Or maybe Price really was too fired up after Wednesday’s brouhaha and came out with high intensity.
He walked two in the first inning. The Yanks jumped ahead 1-0 in the second. Then, Gary Sanchez absolutely demolished a high cutter over the plate for a three-run jack in the third. Price escaped the fourth without damage and then Sanchez got him again, staying back on a 95.5-mph high heater and hitting it to the second level in right field.
Sanchez is now 4-for-7 with four homers against Price in his short career.
It took the lefty 107 pitches to get through five innings of work. Was he distracted? “No. No, I don’t think that at all,” Farrell said. “I just felt like he wasn’t pitching ahead in the count as consistent as he did in Baltimore.”