Price finally finds right postseason stuff
Oft-maligned lefty was ‘like Picasso’ in series-clinching win
After Marwin Gonzalez struck out flailing at an 88-mph plummeting changeup in the fourth inning, David Price walked off the mound nodding like a bobblehead on the dashboard.
Price oppressed the Astros in the game they needed to win, and he knew it. He made them swing and miss 15 times, a dozen on teardrops changeups, each one leaving more heartache in Houston, where the home team’s 27 outs in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series took shape quicker than it felt, like the glacial drip of a shingle’s icicle.
Price, the 0-9 postseason starter doubted by most outside of Boston and many in the city that still thinks about baseball curses, reinvented himself for his first playoff victory, in 11 seasons of trying, with a Championship Seriesclinching opus Thursday night: six shutout innings, three hits, zero walks and nine strikeouts.
The Red Sox beat the Astros 4-1 to advance to the World Series, but the night belonged almost entirely to the southpaw who crafted it.
“He was like Picasso out there,” first baseman Mitch Moreland said. “There’s been a lot of doubt from the outside, but everybody here knows what D.P.’s capable of.”
Price emerged in professional baseball as the real Nuke LaLoosh. The Devil Rays promoted Price from the Class AAA Durham Bulls in 2008 to be their late-innings cleaver in a playoff run. A rookie armed with a 100-mph fastball, a wipeout slider and a refreshing swagger the expansion franchise needed, he closed two games in the World Series, including Game 5, which the Phillies won for the championship.
That was the last time he advanced so far. The only series he knew in the proceeding Octobers was the series of shortcomings, choke jobs and jeered losses with the four franchises that employed him.
The Red Sox signed Price to a seven-year, $217 million contract, and they bore some regret for it until Thursday’s cleansing, clinching win.
“He’s had some unfortunate luck during the postseason,” said Dave Dombrowski, Boston’s president of baseball operations.
In 2014, Dombrowski ran the Tigers’ front office when it traded for Price, who lost a Division Series start to the Orioles despite giving up only two runs in eight innings.
“He’s pitched some good games — not always good ones, but he’s pitched some good ones,” Dombrowski said. “He’s not just a changeup artist, but he pitches more than he used to.
“He’s really the total pitcher at this point.”
Price’s heater sizzles less these days. He has ditched his breaking ball. He whittles batters with darting fastballs and diving changeups.
But against the Astros, he mounted a slow-moving coup in Minute Maid Park unlike any of his performances in his last decade-plus of pitching.
He used his changeup 42 percent of the time, the highest rate in any of the 301 starts in his career.
“It was good in the bullpen, warming up,” Price said. “It got better as the game went on.”
He committed so much to his off-speed that he embodied it. He took long waits and made feline movements between pitches.
“I continued to tell myself, ‘Just stay in the moment,’” he said. “Don't worry about the next hitter. Don't think about the next pitch. Just stay right here.”
He conserved enough energy to try for his longest outing in more than a month. A nine-pitch fifth inning ensured he would get the chance. Jose Altuve lunging hopelessly at another out-of-reach changeup completed Price’s six innings of excellence.
“He worked the whole zone,” Moreland said. “He kept those guys off balance. He spotted everything. He had complete control of the game from the first pitch.”
Price outdid his counterpart, a former teammate of his with the Detroit Tigers. Astros starter Justin Verlander threw Rafael Devers a high and inside 98-mph fastball. Devers, a lefthanded hitter, pulled his hands in for a defensive hack that concealed his full clout.
The ball carried and carried. Left fielder Tony Kemp tracked it, scurrying, slowing and bracing for a soft impact where the padded left-center field wall — and the game — took a sharp turn.
Kemp ran out of room about 355 feet from home plate. The ball traveled 359 feet and landed in the tightest of spaces, sneaking into the corner of the Crawford Boxes for a three-run home run.
Tobacco smog and sparkling wine mist filled Minute Maid Park’s visitor’s clubhouse for the first time since the White Sox swept the Astros in the 2005 World Series.
Moreland interrupted the scrum. He reached in to hand Price a can of Sam Adams, Boston’s tribal beverage. Moments later, J.D. Martinez — whose thirdinning home run began the scoring — barged in to drench Price with a double beer dousing.
Boston struck 10 two-out hits in Games 2 through 4 that acted like kicks to Houston’s windpipe, but Price lulled the defending World Series champions into a sleep from which they will not wake up until mid-February.
And Price, like he said, bathed in booze, basking in the humid fete and smiling: “I’m pitching in the World Series.”