David Price’s monkey was clinging to his back by its fingertips.
Shedding it could have meant so much to the ace on a personal level, and it would have meant the Toronto Blue Jays were back in the American League Championship Series rather than being half-buried by the Kansas City Royals.
Through six innings Saturday, Price, the Blue Jays' left-handed ace, had it on autopilot. He'd shut down the Royals, striking out seven, walking nobody and having allowed just one hit. He had retired 18 consecutive hitters through the sixth.
Then, disaster.
Starting with a terrible misplay in right field, Price’s day unraveled. In a blink, five runs scored on five seventh-inning hits, Toronto’s lead was lost, and Price’s dark October legacy took another massive hit, as did the Blue Jays’ season, with a 6-3 Game 2 Royals victory Saturday at Kauffman Stadium. It put the Royals up 2-0 in the best-of-seven ALCS.
“David was so good tonight,” Blue Jays manager John Gibbons said in his postgame press conference. “It’s a shame it had to end that way.”
Sports Illustrated's Joe Sheehan had a guess as to what happened to Price:
So David Price accidentally saw a calendar during the top of the seventh? That's what we're going with?
— Joe Sheehan (@joe_sheehan) October 17, 2015
Price’s final line ended up being 6.2 innings pitched, with five earned runs on six hits. His postseason ERA is 7.02 for 2015, and for his playoff career as a full-time starter, it is now 5.65 in 51 innings. He also gave up three runs in three innings in his previous outing in the AL Division Series vs. the Texas Rangers as a reliever.
Entering these playoffs, Price’s October reputation was that he was at his worst when the stage was the biggest, discounting his 1.59 ERA in 5.2 relief innings during the Tampa Bay Rays’ World Series run in 2008. Since that postseason and going into 2015, Price was 0-5 with a 4.98 ERA in five postseason starts.
Despite his pitching eight innings and allowing two runs in his only start with the Detroit Tigers in last year’s postseason, Price entered this one needing to prove he was not just a regular-season ace but one who could deliver when his team counted on him most.
He was en route to doing that Saturday before things derailed and fed into the negative narrative, fair or not.
And going into his free agency after the World Series, Price possibly lowered his price tag. That he has lost seven consecutive postseason decisions as a starter, tying him with Hall of Famer Randy Johnson for the most ever, will be used against him and his agent in offseason negotiations. It might also be held against him that the Blue Jays opted to start Marcus Stroman in Game 5 of the ALDS instead of him.
While a few million here or there might not hurt Price’s wallet at this point in his career, it is telling that such a tag has been placed on him at all, almost like a warning label.
WEEI'S Mike Adams agrees:
Still want David Price? Apparent Post Season Choker #RedSox
— Mikey Adams (@MikeyAdamsWEEI) October 17, 2015
Maybe all of this should have been avoided. Maybe that seventh-inning meltdown wasn’t totally on Price.
The five-run Royals rally started with the kind of misplay you expect to see in Little League, not the ALCS. Ben Zobrist’s pop-up into shallow right field should have been an easy one, Price’s 19th consecutive out. Instead, second baseman Ryan Goins waved off right fielder Jose Bautista and then stunningly backed off, letting the ball fall for an improbable leadoff hit.
ESPN's Baseball Tonight provided a still of the play:
When the game changed... pic.twitter.com/rlxF6w29sv
— Baseball Tonight (@BBTN) October 17, 2015
That was the start of the derailing. Price allowed three more singles to the next four batters, and the game was tied, 3-3. Two batters later, with a runner on, two outs and two strikes on Alex Gordon, Price threw a 96 mph fastball that caught too much plate, and Gordon lined it into the right-center gap to score another run.
With the Royals’ dominant bullpen, that was the ballgame.
“You really can’t pitch a better game to that point,” Gibbons said in his press conference. “He’s one pitch away from possibly getting out of that, and then the big hit by Gordon. It was unfortunate. You really can’t pitch a better game to that point. He did a hell of a job. Sometimes it’s just that one little crack, and when you’re on the road, it can open up the floodgates.
“I don’t think he even broke a sweat before that seventh inning. He did a hell of a job. He deserved better; that’s for sure.”
That snowball inning did in Price in Game 2. The Blue Jays are not completely dead. But down two games, they now go home to face Kansas City ace Johnny Cueto, who went eight innings, allowed two runs and struck out eight without a walk in his critical Game 5 start against the Houston Astros in the ALDS.
The Blue Jays advanced to this round after having been down two games to the Texas Rangers in the ALDS. They then won three in a row, so there is plenty of life remaining in this club. Then again, the odds of doing the same thing in back-to-back series in the playoffs are not in Toronto’s favor.
All Price can do now is sit, wait and hope he gets another chance in this series. If he does, it means the Blue Jays overcame this deficit and Price’s breakdown. And if he does, he will be doing it with the monkey firmly grasping his back.
All quotes, unless otherwise specified, have been acquired first-hand by Anthony Witrado. Follow Anthony on Twitter @awitrado and talk baseball here.
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