The Price is definitely right
Short season makes ex-Sox lefty even bigger bargain for Dodgers
Half a season doubles David Price’s chances of staying healthy for a full season, which makes him twice as valuable. Not only that, the Red Sox are picking up half of his salary, which doubles his value to the Dodgers, making him four times the value for his new team than he was in his final season for his previous team.
That’s with half a season. If the schedule is a third of a season, that makes Price an even better bargain. Repeat the math. A third of a season triples Price’s chances of making it through the entire season without missing a start, which makes him three times the bargain. And since the Red Sox are paying half his salary, that makes Price six times the deal for his new team than he was for his old team in 2019.
The on-point outrage over the trading of Mookie Betts one year after the Red Sox signed injury risk Nathan Eovaldi to a four-year, $68 million contract settled down once COVID-19 put sports on the shelf and threatened the 2020 season. The Dodgers were at risk of losing him to free agency after him not having played a single game for them. Not likely now because it’s tough to envision a scenario where either coronavirus concerns or the failure to reach a labor agreement cancels the ’20 season. Plus, the Dodgers are the prohibitive favorites to sign Betts when he reaches free agency at season’s end.
A predictable perennial force who helps a team win games by blending five superior tools with an obsessive approach to getting better, Betts is likely to stay with the Dodgers for a decade or longer and will haunt the Red Sox from a distance.
The aftermath of the coronavirus shutdown might suppress salaries across baseball, which means Betts might not land as lucrative a deal as it would have taken the Red Sox to keep him, but that doesn’t take the Sox off the hook for not making a greater effort to make one of the game’s top-five players a one-uniform superstar. Didn’t happen. The Red Sox could always sign him in the offseason. Not going to happen.
The surreal divorce from Betts in his prime overshadowed every aspect of the trade that landed the Red Sox outfielder Alex Verdugo, infielder Jeter Downs and catcher Connor Wong. The tremor from one of the game’s best players getting traded turned Price into an afterthought when the Red Sox forced him into the deal to rid themselves of half of his $32 million annual salary and the Dodgers happily took him on and plopped him into the middle of their rotation. And the $32 million man shapes up as one of the biggest keys to the Dodgers ending their 32-year world championship drought.
Karma being what it is, you have to like the Dodgers’ chances of winning it all after losing in the World Series in back-to-back years to the Astros and Red Sox, clubs penalized for electronic sign-stealing during the seasons that ended with them winning the ultimate prize. But far more than karma, Price is an important reason the Dodgers should have no trouble getting into the playoffs. And once they get there, a healthy Price makes them that much tougher.
If it happens, that will make it 11 postseasons in 13 years for Price, who slew his October demons in 2018 and was a strong candidate for the World Series MVP hardware that went to Steve Pearce.
It’s a little disappointing that the Red Sox couldn’t get the Dodgers to take more than half of the salary of the left-hander signed through 2022 at $32 million per season.
For a team in full go-for-it-mode as are the Dodgers, $16 million is a bargain for a pitcher of Price’s caliber, even knowing that his chances of staying healthy all year at this point in his career are on the slim side.
Price, 34, fits in as the No. 3 starter for the Dodgers, behind Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler and ahead of Julio Urias and Alex Wood. Price would have slid nicely into the No. 2 slot for the Red Sox, behind Eduardo Rodriguez and ahead of Eovaldi, Martin Perez and perhaps Ryan Weber.
Until the Red Sox can get some help from their starting rotation from their own system, they don’t have a rotation that looks like one of a contending team with or without Price. But that won’t make it any less painful for Red Sox fans if they have to watch MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, wearing a mask, hand the Willie Mays World Series MVP Award to Price at midnight or so, with no handshake, in keeping with coronavirus protocol.