It's kind of weird, although explainable, that neither he nor the Dodgers seemed to give a crap about him being a starting pitcher or even have an important relief role these last couple of years.

I think he'll be most remembered for his role in helping give the Sox greater payroll flexibility in the Chaim era.

Maybe he'll get the start in game 162.

It is kinda weird. The results never really declined. His last season in Boston was 22 starts, a K/9 of nearly 11, a 114 ERA+ with a much better FIP. An injury and choosing to skip 2020 and I figured he was probably physically done. But he's been fine -- much lower K-rate but pitching reasonably effectively, just not really needed by the stacked Dodgers. I guess I'm a little surprised the Dodgers couldn't eat a further 1/4 or so of his salary and move him on somewhere he would be used ... or just release him so he could catch on elsewhere. Last year's Cards rotation was scraping by with Lester, Happ, LeBlanc ... why not Price?

Anyway, glancing at his page the first guy that sprang to mind was Pettitte and Pettitte brings to mind CC

DP thru 33: 2030 IP, 150-80, 124 ERA+, 8.8/2.3 K/BB, 39 bWAR, 20 bWAA
AP thru 33: 2098 IP, 172-91, 121 ERA+, 6.5/2.8 K/BB, 43 bWAR, 23 bWAA
CC thru 29: 2127 IP, 157-88, 123 ERA+, 7.6/2.8 K/BB, 43 bWAR, 23 bWAA

(NOTE: CC only through age 29 to keep the IP about the same, he was a young durable stud throwing a full season at 20.) The K difference is probably mainly era. Pettitte was on consistently winning teams of course but still that's a lot more decisions than the other two.

Of course after that, CC had 1450 innings of a 106 ERA+, 19 WAR, 5 WAA; Pettitte had 1220 innings of 110 ERA+, 18 WAR, 6 WAA. Price is gonna end it with about 120 innings of perfectly fine pitching.

I do think there are a subset of players who simply stop trying when they get the big deal. Baseball requires a ton of hard work to stay on top of it - if you don't have the fire, it's got to be hard. Price has not pitched much in five years - what's that all about ?

He certainly gave out early

As a cardinal fan we've been blessed with the luck that certain marquee players wouldn't sign with us:

Pujols signed with LAA and arguably this year is better than any of the ten of that contract.
Price had a deal with us, went to bed and woke up a Red Sox
Cardinals had a deal for Stanton and he rejected it
Heyward rejected a bigger offer from STL than Chicago

We made big bets on Holliday, Goldy and Arenado and they all worked out.

Trades and signings are not usually black and white but it seems like these all fall into "terrible" or "great"

The update to the article has Price saying he hasn’t made a final decision, and won’t until the season is over. Might just be attempting to deflect attention, since the earlier report had him rather definitively saying: “It’s just time. Everything on my body hurts.”

Price has not pitched much in five years - what's that all about ?

Injuries?

DATE INJURY
9/4/22 Wrist
4/24/22 Undisclosed
9/3/21 Arm
4/26/21 Hamstring
9/5/19 Wrist
8/8/19 Wrist
5/25/19 Flu-like Symptoms
5/3/19 Elbow

And he opted out of 2020.

I do think there are a subset of players who simply stop trying when they get the big deal.

For which we have zero evidence in Price's case. In his first year in Bos all he did was lead the league in IP, BF and GS -- lazy bastard. In 2017 he was hurt and missed the first 2 months of the season and about 8 weeks later in the season. He came back in mid-Sept when it seems folks decided he should be in the pen for the rest of the season. The next season he made 30 starts with a 123 ERA+ ... sure, that's less durability than he'd had before (injury?) I wish the Cubs had a lazy starter like that. In 2019, he made his first 22 starts of the year, got hurt, came back for one start of 2 IP and back on the IL. Then the trade, then covid (when the lazy bastard had the gall to not be paid). In 2021 he was in a swingman role but given the Dodgers had a rotation of Buehler, Urias, Kershaw, Bauer and Gonsolin, there wasn't a lot of need until July Aug when he moved into the rotation and did fine.

It is probably the case that if he went to the Dodgers following 2019 or 2020 and said "please trade/release me if you're not gonna start me" they probably would have accommodated him. So presumably his reduced role was a mutual decision which would make sense if "everything hurts now." If he's no longer physically capable of 5-6 innings every 5th day then "I'll fill whatever role you need as best I can" is generally considered "committed" not lazy. But who knows, maybe he was just punching the clock. Granted, like 99.99% of humans that have ever existed, he was not willing to give up $62 M by retiring (though he gave up about $12 M in the covid year).

Where do you find the injury info?

Javy Baez ... if only we all had crystal balls. Detroit signed a guy who had produced 18 WAR over the previous 3+ seasons. I think it's fair to say that Javy was always gonna be a high risk signing given his extreme offense, kinda hard to think a guy is gonna immediately ...

have a sub-par season.

If you haven't checked in with Javy lately, while the OBP is still well south of 300 (lg OBP is just 310, a sub-300 OBP ain't what it used to be), he's up to 2.5 WAR, 0.7 WAA and 0 Rbat ... and that's with a supposedly below-average glove. Nobody's gonna confuse him with Aaron Judge but since the AS break he's hit 285/330/420, a 111 sOPS+. Nothing to get excited about, that's mainly the difference between a 252 BABIP and a 377 BABIP (career 330). He also has a really weird reverse H/R split which maybe means Tiger Stadium is a very bad fit or maybe he's trying too hard at home or maybe it's a total random fluke or ....

So it's two terrible half-seasons (2020 and this one) out of the last 5, possibly with quickly declining defense, so still plenty there to worry about. But let's give it another year or two before we start laughing at the Tigers for wasting a whopping $23 M a year.

Where do you find the injury info?

Spotrac has the information if you bring up a player's page. This goes directly to Price's injury history, but notice the tabs above the list as it's there for every player.

I found my injury data at a CBS site. I looked at a bunch of guys on sportrac and I see nothing

if only we all had crystal balls.

…I would buy stock in protective cup manufacturers.

I know the man gets a lotta shite for everything post-2018, but holy hell: the Red Sox would not have won in 2018 without Price. And if you look at that 5-game World Series, it's really a travesty that Steve Pearce was MVP over Price (I'm guessing largely because the press by and large seemed to hate Price during the Red Sox years).

Game 2 (Start) (10/24): W, 6 IP / 3 H / 2 ER / 3 BB / 5 K (88 pitches)
Game 3 (Relief) (10/26): 0.2 IP / 1 H / 0 ER / 1 BB / 0 K (13 pitches)
Game 5 (Start) (10/28): W, 7 IP / 3 H / 1 ER / 2 BB / 5 K (89 pitches)

Given where Sale was physically, EdRod's woes (recall the meltdown/thrown glove after giving up the HR in Game 4), and the overall heavy use of Eovaldi, the Red Sox were looking at Porcello on 3 days' rest for a Game 6 and maybe Eovaldi/Johnny Wholestaff for a Game 7. Under those circumstances, for Price to come out there on 3 days' rest (with a relief appearance in between to boot) and throw as he did in Game 5 is as unbelievable as Lowe's Game 7 2004 ALCS performance and... It's barely ever mentioned. Between Pearce's HRs and Eovaldi's Game 3 outing, it's a blip, a footnote, and that just seems incredibly harsh to me.

Again: to me, the Red Sox don't win the 2018 World Series without Price, and while it's largely forgotten, his Game 5 outing is up there with the best Red Sox playoff pitching performances in the 2003-2018 era.

14. Yes, seemed like he had been jinxed in the postseason before that 2018 series; sure came through in that series.

Maybe he'll help the Dodgers in the postseason this year and decide to stick around

[1] Last year he pitched pretty well in relief early in the year, so when there were injuries to the rotation they tried to turn him back into a starter. But he was crap as a starter, so he ended up back in the pen by the end of the year despite the team not even having a 5th starter down the stretch.

The linked article does not say Price will retire and he says he has made no decision on retirement so these reports seem a bit premature.

I know the man gets a lotta shite for everything post-2018, but holy hell: the Red Sox would not have won in 2018 without Price. And if you look at that 5-game World Series, it's really a travesty that Steve Pearce was MVP over Price (I'm guessing largely because the press by and large seemed to hate Price during the Red Sox years).

It obviously didn't work out overall, but I'm happy he had his moments during that great run.

So presumably his reduced role was a mutual decision which would make sense if "everything hurts now."

Yeah. It's always amusing when lay people question an athlete's toughness. If a mere mortal put the same stress on their arm as Price put on his, they'd understand that kind of pain.

And if you look at that 5-game World Series, it's really a travesty that Steve Pearce was MVP over Price

I said at the time that a co-MVP award would have been appropriate.

But he was crap as a starter

No he wasn't. Over those 8 starts and 1 inning of relief, he had a 4.00 ERA with a 4.09 FIP. Just 26 K in 36 IP (not particularly good anymore) but also only 4 HR (which is fine) and 10 BB (good). He gave up a line of 215/274/370 ... BABIP lucky but plenty of room between that and league average. He was only going 4-5 innings but that's not so weird anymore and probably expected when the guy doesn't move into the rotation until mid-season. I can imagine they weren't easy to watch, few were "clean" and none were dominant, but the job got done and he averaged about 14 pitches per inning. I wouldn't be surprised if, combined with other data, they decided he was a ticking time bomb and they'd better yank him now. I wouldn't be surprised if he told them "even the 60-70 pitch outings are killing me." But the actual results were just fine.

Possibly his exit from the rotation is also somewhat mischaracterized. The Dodgers were already using Mitch White (in a similar way to Price) and a bullpen day. They pulled Price first, skipping him for 1-2 potential starts. His last start was Aug 22. He might have been expected to start one of the games from Aug 27-29 and, for all intents and purposes, he was the starter on Aug 28 -- they used an opener then Price came in to start the 2nd and pitched 3.2 innings (63 pitches which was about his typical start). The Dodgers did have one more BP game and White start with Price getting just 1.2 IP before the rotation was intact again for the last 3 weeks. So basically, the Dodgers skipped one Price start at the end of that run which is not exactly "back in the pen by the end of the year despite the team not even having a 5th starter down the stretch."

For clarity: the Dodgers last 21 starts of the year went to Gonsolin, Kershaw, Urias, Scherzer and Buehler. The Dodgers had their full rotation from Sept 9 on. Price was in the rotation from July 9 to Aug 28. The Dodgers 2021 rotation as near as I can piece together from game logs:

Buehler, Bauer, Kershaw, Urias, May (Gonsolin hurt) to start.

May gets hurt in early May but off-days mean the Dodgers don't need #5 until mid-May. Jimmy Nelson gets the first start then it's Price.

Gonsolin returns on June 9. Full rotation until Bauer gets not suspended and Kershaw gets hurt in early July. Then it's a scramble but Price enters on July 9 and starts every 5th game until Aug 28 if we include his "not opening" start.

Scherzer arrives in early Aug but Gonsolin gets hurt again so the scramble continues for another 5 weeks until Gonsolin and Kershaw return. Price did not start during the last week of the scramble, skipping 1-2 potential starts.