It’s hard to feel sorry for someone earning $31 million a year, actually less than a year, but I think I was starting to feel that way about David Price. Here was this guy making a monstrous amount of money for throwing a baseball 60 feet 6 inches, and he couldn’t win a game in October. He couldn’t beat his team’s fiercest rival either.
In four regular-season starts against the Yankees this year Price had three losses and an 11.30 earned run average. The Red Sox, however, won enough games – a major league-most 108 – that Price’s failures against the Yankees didn’t keep them from October. But what about the games Price would pitch in October? Certainly, no one would mistake Price for a pitching version of Mr. October.
Price, a 33-year-old left-hander, started the second game of the division series against the Yankees with a career post-season record of 2 wins (both in relief) and 8 losses and a 5.03 e.r.a. He got only 5 outs, giving up 3 runs on 3 hits and 2 walks in a 42-pitch performance. Had Price been performing on Broadway and not at Fenway Park he would have been booed off the stage.
Refusing to give up on Price, Manager Alex Cora started him in the second game of the league championship series against defending World Series champion Houston. Price was still not a $31 million pitcher as he allowed 4 runs and 5 hits with 4 walks in 4 2/3 innings. However, his teammates rescued him by hitting their way to a 7-5 victory.
Price had lived to pitch another day. That day was Game 5, and Price shut out the Astros for 6 innings, allowing 3 hits and not more than 1 base runner while walking no one and striking out 9.
By earning his first post-season win as a starter after nine losses, Price removed the monkey from his back in time for his next start in the World Series against the Dodgers.
Price can opt out of his seven-year contract after the World Series, but there is no chance in the world he will take that step. The contract has four years and $127 million left in it, and Price could not possibly get that kind of money elsewhere.
In addition, Price is with one of the best teams, if not the best, right where he is. Why would he want to change uniforms and addresses?
The Red Sox are ascending in baseball’s ranks. The same cannot be said for the Yankees, whose primary goal this year was not reaching the World Series but staying under the luxury tax threshold so they could start over with the lowest tax rate and be in position this off-season to pursue the most expensive free agents, such as Bryce Harper and Manny Machado.
The Yankees achieved their goal, but the Red Sox attained theirs, too. They are in the World Series while the Yankees get to sit in their lounge chairs at home and watch the Red Sox play the Dodgers. Although tax matters were not as expensive as they are now, George Steinbrenner never let the luxury tax intimidate him. His son, Hal, the managing general partner, and General Manager Brian Cashman opted to pay less financially but more in baseball penalties.
That is, by cheaping out, the Yankees forfeited the chance to play the 2018 season with a cheaper product. Yes, the Yankees unveiled a corps of good young players, but the Red Sox have some of those, too (Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi, Jackie Bradley Jr., Xander Bogaerts, Rafael Devers) while at the same time paying free agent J. D. Martinez $110 million for five years.
Teams shouldn’t have to spend the billions of dollars the Yankees squandered in Cashman’s two decades as general manager, and most teams don’t spend so profligately. The Red Sox have felt they have been forced to spend to keep up with the Yankees. That game escalates payrolls throughout the majors, and you don’t hear the players complaining about that development.
When the 2018 season began, five teams besides the Red Sox had higher payrolls than the Yankees, according to the reliable reporting of the Associated Press. If George Steinbrenner were alive – he died in 2010 – that economic development would not have occurred. Given the current circumstances, it might not occur again.
The Yankees-Red Sox rivalry has become too heated for the Yankees to allow the Red Sox an edge. The Red Sox, however have an edge, and it’s not economic. It’s Dave Dombrowski, the president of baseball operations. That’s a fancy substitute title for general manager that someone thought up several years ago to make the general manager sound more important.
The Red Sox don’t have a general manager. Dombrowski obviously hasn’t felt the need to hire a general manager, demonstrating that clubs don’t need both positions. The last fellow who had that title at Fenway Park left when Dombrowski was hired in 2015 two weeks after the Detroit Tigers fired him as their president and general manager.
Mike Ilitch, the Tigers’ owner, fired him because he wanted to win a World Series before he died, felt that Dombrowski had had enough time to achieve that desire and he wasn’t getting any younger. Ilitch, however, didn’t make it. He died, at the age of 87, less than two years after firing Dombrowski.
Two Dombrowski teams, the Tigers of 2006 and 2012, played in the World Series but lost, respectively, to the Cardinals and the Giants.
Should the Red Sox win this World Series, it wouldn’t be Dombrowski’s first championship. He was general manager of the Florida Marlins when they won the Series in 1997. As general manager of that surprising team, Dombrowski had to carry out the post-Series orders of the owner, H. Wayne Huizenga, to demolish the team. Huizenga was a businessman and said he didn’t buy the team to lose money.
There is no danger of Dombrowski’s having to hold a fire sale if the Red Sox win. Dombrowski would be a hero and would not be able to pass a Boston bar without being boisterously toasted.
And should Price win a game, Boston fans should have a pool to help pay him his $31 million.