David Price Unhappy in Boston

[Skin Blues]

The type of people that loudly rag on an athlete for poor performance are usually not the ones that are in any way capable of analyzing performance. These people see the ERA and that's about as far as it goes. You'd think they'd see the value in 230 innings with K and BB rates better than his career to date, but... that ain't gonna happen.

[Schad]

The type of people that loudly rag on an athlete for poor performance are usually not the ones that are in any way capable of analyzing performance. These people see the ERA and that's about as far as it goes. You'd think they'd see the value in 230 innings with K and BB rates better than his career to date, but... that ain't gonna happen.

Yeah, he wasn't actually bad last year. Still, there are things from his performance data that could be cause for concern: his hard contact rate skyrocketed, as did the frequently with which he was hit to pull side. The latter isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself (chopped grounders to pull side are manna from heaven), but he went from being in the bottom five among qualified starters to the top ten...combined with the XBH spike in 2016 that's worth a raised eyebrow. Not concerning stuff, but approach; I mean, if you're a left-handed pitcher moving to Fenway, the thing you most want to avoid is hard contact to pull side.

[Skin Blues]

The type of people that loudly rag on an athlete for poor performance are usually not the ones that are in any way capable of analyzing performance. These people see the ERA and that's about as far as it goes. You'd think they'd see the value in 230 innings with K and BB rates better than his career to date, but... that ain't gonna happen.

Yeah, he wasn't actually bad last year. Still, there are things from his performance data that could be cause for concern: his hard contact rate skyrocketed, as did the frequently with which he was hit to pull side. The latter isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself (chopped grounders to pull side are manna from heaven), but he went from being in the bottom five among qualified starters to the top ten...combined with the XBH spike in 2016 that's worth a raised eyebrow. Not concerning stuff, but approach; I mean, if you're a left-handed pitcher moving to Fenway, the thing you most want to avoid is hard contact to pull side.

Certainly it wasn't a perfect season, but while his hard contact rate went up, his soft contact rate actually went up to the highest level since 2011 in Tampa, too. A lot of this is looking for a reason to justify the ERA after the fact rather than just accepting that he had a career high BABIP and HR/FB% which always tend to fluctuate wildly from year to year and have a big influence on ERA.

If his ERA was around 3.50 or so like his peripherals would suggest, nobody would be nit picking about his hard contact % going up. Case in point: Chris Sale, new saviour of Red Sox Nation, saw his Hard Contact % skyrocket from 25.1% (his career norm) in 2015 to 31.7% last year; an identical 6.6 percentage point bump as David Price. But his BABIP and HR/FB% both decreased last year, so nobody cares. He's still the same old Chris Sale since his ERA was good.

[Schad]

Certainly it wasn't a perfect season, but while his hard contact rate went up, his soft contact rate actually went up to the highest level since 2011 in Tampa, too. A lot of this is looking for a reason to justify the ERA after the fact rather than just accepting that he had a career high BABIP and HR/FB% which always tend to fluctuate wildly from year to year and have a big influence on ERA.

If his ERA was around 3.50 or so like his peripherals would suggest, nobody would be nit picking about his hard contact % going up. Case in point: Chris Sale, new saviour of Red Sox Nation, saw his Hard Contact % skyrocket from 25.1% (his career norm) in 2015 to 31.7% last year; an identical 6.6 percentage point bump as David Price. But his BABIP and HR/FB% both decreased last year, so nobody cares. He's still the same old Chris Sale since his ERA was good.

Yeah, it's more the hard contact and pull rate jumps in tandem that are just a bit weird. They don't indicate that he's suddenly going to get tagged regularly going forward, just that he pitched a bit differently in 2016 than previous years for reasons unknown, and he seemingly got hit harder as a result. You can actually see that difference in his pitch charts to RHH, as well...he threw inside far more in 2016 than in 2015. Might be an organizational thing, might be that Price fell in love with a particular sequencing, might be him trying to add to his repertoire in advance of his decline years, no clue.

[phillipmike]

The situation just gets weirder and weirder.

David Price told Red Sox reporters that he’s not 100 percent certain exactly what the injury he’s facing is, but in fairly strange fashion, noted that he’d have opted for surgery if he were 22 or 23 years old (via Evan Drellich of the Boston Herald). “They said if I was 22 or 23, they’d have told me to go have surgery,” said Price. “…I’ve gone through this. This is something I feel like happens every spring training. It’s those first four to five weeks of spring training that I feel like I go through this every single year, and this year was just a little bit worse.” Pressed on the specifics of the injury Price stated that he’s not sure what precisely set off the alarm bells for doctors but added that his elbow feels good and offered no concern regarding his ulnar collateral ligament. There’s no timeline for his recovery, though Drellich notes that it’s looking likely that Price will be on the DL to open the season.

[BigLeagueChew]

Interesting that he's sore before the start of just about every season. If he's in pain, many others are as well.

[sideshow]

I never thought about it before, but elite athletes who have dominated at every level just aren't used to how people behave around them when they are underperforming. They assume everyone loves them for who they are, they don't get the whole conditional aspect of it.

Fans aren't the players' mothers. We're their fathers.

That was cold as ice! lol. I am going to give my kids a hug tonight.