David Price is very, very good, as he showed last night while striking out 10 Red Sox over 8 inning of 3-run ball.
There are a few certainties that are evoked when discussing Price.
- Price is set to hit free agency after 2015 and he’s going to get PAID.
- Price is going to eat innings like it’s his last meal. He’s averaged 207 innings pitched over the past four years and is currently leading baseball with 163.2 IP.
- He’s having his best season as a pro. His fielding independent pitching is currently 2.97, better than his low mark of 3.03 in 2013. It’s gone down every year for the past five despite a slight drop-off in velocity. In 2014, his four-seamer is average 93.4 MPH, down from his career average of 94.3.
- He’s not getting traded. Not this year, at least.
If you’ll allow me to go back to the part when I said Price is getting PAID – sorry for yelling – I mean seriously paid. He might not eclipse Clayton Kershaw’s 7-year, $215 million blockbuster, but he’ll certainly be in the $25-$30 million a year neighborhood… and by neighborhood I mean gated community where multi-millionaires feed caviar to their dogs. That’s how baseball players live, isn’t it?
Simply put, the small-market Rays will never be able to afford Price after his current contract expires. According to ESPN, Tampa is dead last in MLB attendance, which means their current payroll of $81.5 million is already pushing the limit of sustainability. They can’t afford him and they know it.
If the Rays’ season was still looking as bleak as it was a few weeks ago, when they held the worst record in the American League, I’d endorse a trade for Price. Now, though, they’ve won 8 straight and are just 7.5 games back in an uncharacteristically lousy AL East. Due to their success in recent years, their minor league system isn’t as talent-stacked as it once was, and while Price could fetch multiple blue chip prospects if traded today, he shouldn’t be dealt. And he won’t be.
Since he’s still under contract through next season, the Rays have the luxury of shifting into go-for-it mode this year and reevaluating the Price situation in the off-season. When they ultimately determine they can’t re-sign him – which they will – they’ll decide between trading him in the off-season or wait until the 2015 trade deadline nears and somebody gets desperate.
As odd as this would have sounded a few weeks ago, the Rays are my favorite to win the East. The Blue Jays and Yankees are beat to hell, the Orioles lack frontline starting pitching, and the Red Sox… well, yikes.
I do fully expect Price to be traded by this time next year, and while it might be a bit early to discuss possible destinations, there is one scenario I find quite interesting.
The following is from an interview Price did with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Winning absolutely is something you want to do. Being a part of something special is also something you want to do. You can take that to a first-place team. You could take that all the way to a last-place team like the Cubs. With the talent they have coming up they could be a very special team in a few years as well. That would probably be the coolest city to win a championship in.
OH MAN. YES, PLEASE. PLEASE!
Follow Sean on Twitter @the_graw
