Pedro is a pitching god, maybe Price should meet with him personally.
David Price's Problem
- Thread starter Darnell's Son
- Start date
David Price pitches like he is afraid of quicksand.
When things are going well, he's excellent. When things do not go as well, he gets afraid of what might go wrong next.
He could talk to Pedro for a century but it wouldn't work. Pedro never met a situation where he was afraid to fail, of making a mistake. When he did make a mistake, he immediately put it behind him and knew he was going to get the next guy.
Price is not wired the same way.
When things are going well, he's excellent. When things do not go as well, he gets afraid of what might go wrong next.
He could talk to Pedro for a century but it wouldn't work. Pedro never met a situation where he was afraid to fail, of making a mistake. When he did make a mistake, he immediately put it behind him and knew he was going to get the next guy.
Price is not wired the same way.
His 'good pitch' was right into Chisenhall's sweet spot. Either he's making excuses or our advance scouting and analytics messed up badly.
So you don't think that's a skill that can be learned, that's it's inherent to someone's character?
Personally, I beg to differ, and while this is a total bullshit anecdote that I'm sure I'll get trashed for, I'll share it anyway. Playing poker, to get better, requires learning lots of new skills, one of which is learning to fail and coming back from that in your play. Over the years, my personal poker game has gotten better and a lot of it has to do with dealing with that fear of failure, particularly when it comes to aggression at the table. I'm not a naturally aggressive person, but I've had to learn it at the poker table to play better and get better results. It's a constant work-in-progress, and I have to remind myself frequently to be aggressive, but it's getting there and I believe it's a skill that can be learned if you want to and put the time into it.
Price needs to get some of that aggression and maybe Pedro could give him some pointers in that direction.
If a usually good / great pitcher struggles in the SSS of the playoffs, usually I don't consider it a big deal and imagine it would even in over time. But Price has shown entirely the wrong attitude after his poor starts. There's this, and I hope we all remember him lashing out ridiculously on Twitter after getting whacked by the Sox a few years ago.
http://nesn.com/2013/10/david-price-goes-on-twitter-rant-lists-his-career-accomplishments-after-loss-to-red-sox/
Normally we don't get a picture of how players are handling things because they just give canned answers or don't talk to the press. So maybe other guys feel the same way and we don't hear it. But I really don't think this is a good attitude to have if you want to learn from your mistakes and get better.
I thought it was really interesting that they had sets of signs from the get go last night. I don't know if that's based off of credible evidence of sign stealing, or they're just paranoid, but it certainly compelling that they felt that they needed to do that. To me it seems like adding another thing for Price to think about maybe wasn't the most wise thing considering how fragile his psyche seems. I believe it was in the second inning after trouble began brewing that Sandy and Price got crossed up on the signs. Dollars to donuts says the eff up was on Price's end. The inning went down the crapper after that.
Darling noted how he would not have liked using signs the way they did and I bet he's not alone in the pitching world.
Darling noted how he would not have liked using signs the way they did and I bet he's not alone in the pitching world.
I love to listen to Pedro, always insightful,knowledgable and fascinating. Price could learn a ton from Pedro. ANY pitcher could learn a ton from Pedro.
One thing I love about baseball is the mental aspect of the game. "90% of baseball is half mental". Seriously I think a big part of Price's problem is mental. He needs to sit down with Pedro and/or our sports psychologist Tewksbury and figure this out. Even before yesterdays loss, I've seen him deep breathing on the mound and laboring. I'm still waiting for the career ERA of 3.16 to return. I know that may be asking too much because of Fenway but mid 3's should be doable. I'm not making excuses for Price but the pitcher has too much talent to just be viewed as one who wilts in the big time pressure of play-off baseball.
Soft single in the hole to left. Infield bleeder. Texas leaguer bloop hit. Then a crap hitter who can't hit lefties to save his life turns on a 93 mph fastball on the inner black for a home run.
Look at Chisenhall's heat map (batting average) from this year against fastballs from LHP.
On inside fastballs from lefties, he was AWFUL. Absolutely awful. So a 93 mph fastball on the inner black from Price is about as good a pitch as you can throw to this chump.
And he drills it over the short RF porch for about the most unlikely home run you can imagine. It really is hard to be critical of Price for that. Or for the three weak hits that preceded them.
What I get frustrated with is the two walks to their number nine hitter. That shouldn't happen.
Look at Chisenhall's heat map (batting average) from this year against fastballs from LHP.
On inside fastballs from lefties, he was AWFUL. Absolutely awful. So a 93 mph fastball on the inner black from Price is about as good a pitch as you can throw to this chump.
And he drills it over the short RF porch for about the most unlikely home run you can imagine. It really is hard to be critical of Price for that. Or for the three weak hits that preceded them.
What I get frustrated with is the two walks to their number nine hitter. That shouldn't happen.
Yup. I'm a believer that Price has a few mental issues with big games but I am going to be completely fair about yesterday....he didn't do much wrong. Sometimes crappy things happen in baseball when you make good pitches. The Chisenhall pitch was a perfect place to attack him and Price paints it on the black....laser 3-run HR is the result with the two guys on base in the first place due to complete garbage contact hits. At that point Price must have been thinking "what in the blue f**k do I have to do?". With the shear sample of good pitchers in the playoffs, there is bound to be a few that fall on the wrong side of the variance gods and it seems Price is one of those guys. It sucks. It's easy to want to blame the pitcher 100% but we all know that it is a mathematical certainty that some are going to be unlucky...yet we still fight accepting that. It happened to Barry Bonds as a hitter for a while until he turned it around. Ditto ARod. So maybe Price will start getting some luck on his side eventually too.
Basically, Price hasn't helped himself a whole lot with the HRs but on top of that it appears he's gotten very unlucky too and yesterday was a good example of one of those starts where he got unlucky. There's been others where he legit was poor. I don't think yesterday qualified. The box score will look poor but Price didn't serve up meatballs that inning. He got beat on a pitch that gets the hitter out literally about 90% of the time.
Price doesn't challenge these hitters at all. He needs to throw inside to get Cleveland off balance. I'm pretty certain we are going to see him again in this series so it's really something to watch for. Whether he ends up starting game 5 or he works out of the pen.
Agreed. That was a great pitch to throw Chisenhall. But a crappy hitter against left handers throwing inside fastballs just happened to hit an inside fastball from a good lefty over the fence. It's not like Price tried to throw inside and left it over the heart of the plate. It was on the black.
Sometimes the other team just does things well, even from players you don't expect.
This is the bottom line, and why I find any armchair psychology about Price's desire to compete or anything along those lines quite misplaced. The other example given in this very thread about a dominant regular season pitcher struggling in the playoffs is Kershaw, who by all accounts is as laser focused an athlete as there is on day's he's starting (see Jonah Keri's Grantland piece about this: http://grantland.com/features/clayton-kershaw-best-pitcher-league-blasphemy-compare-sandy-koufax/). Any notion that Price just needs to be more aggressive or that it's all mental is nonsense.
It looks like he just doesn't have close to the same stuff that he did 5 years ago. When you throw your fastball to major league hitters at 92-93 mph, you had best be living on the absolute black, and when you're not, you're going to get hit. When he was throwing in the upper 90's with Tampa, he had margin for error.
Unfortunately the Sox paid full freight for the Tampa version and aren't ever going to get that.
Unfortunately the Sox paid full freight for the Tampa version and aren't ever going to get that.
Not if that hitter was digging in because he knew the LHP's pitch wouldn't hit him.
I think this is exactly the case. He does have great command though, so the downside is probably a bunch more years like this one. They'll be payng ace money for a decent #2 starter. There are worse "mistakes," like payng $20 million for an overweight and injured third baseman.
Lost 1 mph in a year when the ball seems juiced. Not good timing. I remember Beckett having a similar year 1 in 2006 when he gave up 36 HR. Balls were jumping out of the park in 2006 as well. In 2007, HR rates dropped 13% across the league and Becketts HR rate dropped in half and he had a great year. Lot of pitcher from the Rays system having similar issues with the HR this year, they all like to pitch up in the zone and the ball is making them pay for that
This has always been Tito's MO.
Farrell did a pretty good imitation of playoff Tito in game 1, using Koji early.
As long as we're talking about Price and luck.
It gets worse with regards to Chisenhall. As you noted, that was a perfect place to attack Chisenhall even if he was a threat against left-handed pitchers, which he isn't. 8 home runs in his career off LHP, and he saw all of 52 PA against them this year because they usually bury him. Tito's decision to bat him against Price based on a sample size under 20 PAs was not genius, it was a shot in the dark. We're getting killed by Roberto Perez and Lonnie Chisenhall. Sometimes baseball is bullshit.
Price has had some very real struggles in the postseason. But even so, his peripherals are good -- his xFIP sits at 3.54 for his postseason career. K% and BB% are right where you'd expect them to be. His biggest problem, you won't be surprised to hear, is a LOB% at 60%.
I'm disinclined to attribute this to a deficiency in Price's make-up. Contrary to what a lot of people have said, I don't think 66 innings is a large enough sample size to judge a pitcher on. Andy Pettite's first fifty postseason innings were pretty bad -- he's got almost 300 innings total, and you shouldn't be surprised to hear his career postseason ERA is .04 off his career ERA.
Apologies for only quoting a part of your post, as I agree with your main point: but it would also be fair to note that Petitte's reg. season career #s include many games against the dregs of the league(s), and most of that time was when competitive balance was not balanced at all. His post-season #'s are against the best of the best, the pee-pee pants Twins games notwithstanding.....
- Pete Abraham @PeteAbe 5m5 minutes ago
"I expect I'll be more comfortable here next season and I expect to win. We should have another great team."
0 replies2 retweets2 likes
Pete Abraham @PeteAbe 8m8 minutes ago
Price said he's confident he can end his postseason woes and understand he has to.
0 replies2 retweets8 likes
Pete Abraham @PeteAbe 9m9 minutes ago
David Price, to his credit, showed up and took on all questions.
David Price on breakup day at Fenway Park: "I'm going to make these fans love me and I've got six more years to do it."
http://www.espn.com/espn/now?nowId=21-0577552322381486259-4
http://www.espn.com/espn/now?nowId=21-0577552322381486259-4
I'm glad he's confident, and he seems to have a healthy attitude about the expectations he faces. It would be nice, however, if just once he pitched well as a starter in the postseason.
Well, he's right. We've seen it time and again with good players coming here and struggling in their first seasons before getting better. Beckett was the first notable one I can think of, but Porcello's another, obviously. JD Drew had an OPS+ of 105 his first year in Boston; his next 2 were 138 and 134.
I'm open to the idea but I'd have to see more evidence. It could easily be:
1. Selection bias - you tend to sign / acquire players coming off good years, so they tend to regress the first year and "disappoint". We also remember the high-profile disappointments more than someone like Uehara who didn't have high expectations coming in. For each Beckett there may be a Mike Lowell.
2. Random chance
Also is this something special about Boston or do all big FAs tend to disappoint at first? You'd have to compare this to the whole league.
1. Selection bias - you tend to sign / acquire players coming off good years, so they tend to regress the first year and "disappoint". We also remember the high-profile disappointments more than someone like Uehara who didn't have high expectations coming in. For each Beckett there may be a Mike Lowell.
2. Random chance
Also is this something special about Boston or do all big FAs tend to disappoint at first? You'd have to compare this to the whole league.
