Baseball Prospectus

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Preseason Long-Term Forecast (Beyond the 2019 Projections)

Comparable Players (Similarity Index 79)

Rank	Score	Name	Year	Run Average	Trend
1	94	Johan Santana	2012	5.00
2	93	Josh Beckett	2013	6.23
3	91	Cole Hamels	2017	4.50
4	87	Kelvim Escobar	2009	3.60
5	87	Anibal Sanchez	2017	6.92
6	86	A.J. Burnett	2010	5.69
7	86	John Smoltz	2000	0.00	DNP
8	85	Adam Wainwright	2015	2.25
9	85	Jon Lester	2017	5.03
10	85	Roy Oswalt	2011	3.88
11	85	Marco Estrada	2017	5.03
12	84	Jake Peavy	2014	4.00
13	84	Erik Bedard	2012	5.44
14	84	Vic Raschi	1952	3.11
15	84	Scott Kazmir	2017	0.00	DNP
16	84	Kevin Millwood	2008	5.55
17	84	Justin Verlander	2016	3.20
18	83	Mike Mussina	2002	4.30
19	83	Bob Gibson	1969	2.41
20	82	Mike Cuellar	1970	3.81
21	82	Jeff Samardzija	2018	6.45
22	82	Phil Niekro	1972	3.54
23	82	Jim Bunning	1965	2.85
24	81	Ted Higuera	1991	4.46
25	81	Justin Duchscherer	2011	0.00	DNP
26	80	Jack Morris	1988	4.40
27	80	CC Sabathia	2014	6.07
28	80	Jason Schmidt	2006	3.97
29	80	Gavin Floyd	2016	4.06
30	80	Tom Seaver	1978	3.36
31	79	Bartolo Colon	2006	6.23
32	79	Mike Scott	1988	3.05
33	79	Curt Schilling	2000	3.85
34	79	Charlie Root	1932	3.81
35	79	Ted Lilly	2009	3.36
36	79	Steve Carlton	1978	3.31
37	79	Pascual Perez	1990	1.93
38	78	Jered Weaver	2016	5.36
39	78	Bret Saberhagen	1997	6.92
40	78	Andy Pettitte	2005	2.67
41	78	Shaun Marcum	2015	5.40
42	78	Jimmy Key	1994	3.64
43	78	George Pipgras	1933	4.21
44	78	Freddy Garcia	2010	4.87
45	78	Mike Garcia	1957	4.13
46	78	Wilbur Wood	1975	4.57	DNP
47	77	Virgil Trucks	1950	3.82
48	77	Tommy Bridges	1940	3.75
49	77	Juan Marichal	1971	3.65
50	77	Colby Lewis	2013	0.00	DNP
51	77	Zack Greinke	2017	3.56
52	77	Stan Coveleski	1923	3.87
53	77	Jeff Fassero	1996	3.69
54	77	Jason Hammel	2016	4.16
55	76	Don Sutton	1978	4.12
56	76	Dazzy Vance	1924	2.54
57	76	Preacher Roe	1949	2.92
58	76	Bobo Newsom	1941	5.09
59	76	George Earnshaw	1933	7.11
60	75	Cliff Melton	1945	0.00	DNP
61	75	Warren Spahn	1954	3.49
62	75	Mark Langston	1994	5.05
63	75	Whitey Ford	1962	3.14	DNP
64	75	Larry Jansen	1954	6.99
65	75	Javier Vazquez	2010	5.49
66	75	Hisashi Iwakuma	2014	3.52
67	75	Wandy Rodriguez	2012	4.33
68	75	Wilbur Cooper	1925	4.79
69	75	Ben Sheets	2012	3.83
70	75	Orlando Hernandez	1999	4.53
71	75	Roger Clemens	1996	3.93
72	75	Ervin Santana	2016	3.87
73	75	John Lackey	2012	0.00	DNP
74	74	Brad Radke	2006	4.82
75	74	Pedro Martinez	2005	2.86
76	74	Frank Lary	1963	3.35
77	74	Yusmeiro Petit	2018	3.00
78	74	Claude Passeau	1942	3.76
79	74	Billy Pierce	1960	3.67
80	74	Bronson Arroyo	2010	3.96
81	74	Gaylord Perry	1972	2.07
82	74	Joe Dobson	1950	4.56
83	74	Orel Hershiser	1992	4.31
84	74	Jesse Chavez	2017	5.41
85	74	Doug Davis	2009	4.47
86	74	Doug Fister	2017	5.48
87	74	Brandon McCarthy	2017	4.18
88	73	Doug Drabek	1996	5.24
89	73	Ron Reed	1976	2.74
90	73	Matt Morris	2008	12.49
91	73	Dennis Eckersley	1988	2.48
92	73	Rodrigo Lopez	2009	7.50
93	73	Bryn Smith	1989	3.17
94	73	James Shields	2015	4.14
95	73	Bud Norris	2018	4.21
96	72	Andy Messersmith	1979	4.91
97	72	Matt Garza	2017	5.65
98	72	Johnny Sain	1951	4.83
99	72	Al Benton	1944	0.00	DNP
100	72	Chris Carpenter	2008	2.93

BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2019		Due to publishing agreements, the 2019 player comments and team essays are only available in the Baseball Prospectus 2019 book (available in hardcopy, and soon e-book and Kindle).
2018		Block out all the noise for a second. Forget about the spat with Dennis Eckersley or the tiff with reporter Evan Drellich or the ridiculous “is Price faking his injury” propaganda from the mouth-breathers. Just look at Price’s performance, and be honest: You didn’t realize he was that decent in 2017, did you? Days of Price’s Life has become Boston’s leading drama when the Pats aren’t playing, but when the big lefty was actually on the mound last season he was a good pitcher. Sure, the giant caveat here is that Price threw just 74 2/3 innings, and 8 2/3 of them came in relief. It was outstanding relief work, but that won’t cut it when you're making $30 million a year. Nonetheless, when healthy, Price proved he’s still mostly the guy the Red Sox invested in. That’s one question answered, but two big ones remain. First, will Price’s left elbow allow him to log 200 innings in a season? And second, does Price hate Boston enough to opt out of his contract after 2018 even if it will cost him money? Tune in next time to find out.
2017		Life can be tough for players who don’t live up to their contracts in Boston, but even if Price had dominated in 2016, he was going to be a tough sell for many Sox fans. After all, Price served as one of their chief antagonists for years. He shut them down in the 2008 postseason, was a sore loser when Boston returned the favor in 2013 and took more shots at David Ortiz than your average Yankees fan along the way. There was always going to be an adjustment period, but Price didn’t endear himself to Massholes by carrying an an ERA that started with a four for most of the year and submitting yet another bad playoff start. Seriously, the only way Price could be less popular in Boston right now is if you stitched “Drew" on the back of his uniform. Advanced metrics suggest Price was actually quite good last season, and the $217 million man did lead all of baseball in innings pitched. Good luck bringing those points up to your standard Red Sox fan who just watched Jon Lester win another ring, though. All Price can do is hope his ERA matches his DRA next season as he waits for another shot at October redemption. Until then, Price will remain the ire of Sox fans with long memories, medium iced coffees, short tempers and no patience.
2016		Just like Mark McGwire's 62nd home run, the moon landing and Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, we all remember where we were when we saw David Price storm out of the bullpen in Game Four of the ALDS. In fact, it's still as befuddling today as it was on October 12th, even knowing the Blue Jays went on to win the series. Before he was relegated to mop-up duty that day, Price finished second in the AL Cy Young voting after coming over from Detroit at the trade deadline. A true workhorse, Price has faced more batters over the last six years than Clayton Kershaw, Cole Hamels and Justin Verlander; nobody has faced more than him since the start of 2014. He also found himself immune, at least during the regular season, to two major tenets of the modern pitching age: the velocity aging curve (Price saw his highest mark since 2012) and the third-time-through-the-order penalty (his .533 OPS against third-time opponents was lower than his first or second). The playoffs continued to be his bugaboo, but there's no reason to believe this won't resolve itself over the life of his massive new contract.
2015		Forty years ago, 40 pitchers faced at least 1,000 batters in a season. In the last four seasons, one did: this guy, last year. It's no wonder Price, the ace of a waffling contender, endured a typhoon of trade rumors. Finally he was freighted to Detroit to supplement the Best Starting Rotation Ever, which was still not enough to win a postseason game. The Tigers might have anticipated a Randy Johnson/CC Sabathia-type performance down the stretch, but received the same old stoic eight-inning vignettes. Now in his final year of team control, he could face another 1,000 batters, spell the bullpen even on his mediocre nights and run away with the gross tonnage of Scrooge McDuck's swimming pool next winter.
2014		The uncontested king of the Rays' jungle, Price struggled in the early going before a triceps injury landed him on the disabled list for the first time. You could argue the case that he improved on his 2012 Cy Young performance when he returned healthy in early July. His strikeout rate dropped a bit, but his command and control have never been better. Price lost some velocity off his fastball, but he had room for a decline, as he still clocked in with an average of 94 mph. Following that heat with a low-80s changeup and curveball along with a cutter in the upper 80s that he commands to his arm side ... well, it's easy to see why he's one of the best pitchers in the game. And he won't turn 30 until late in 2015.
2013		After he won his 20th game, Price was asked whether he felt he'd had a Cy Young season. His answer: "One hundred percent." And who is to argue, other than Justin Verlander? Price established himself as the ace the Rays foresaw when they took him with the first pick in 2007. What stands out is his consistency, both year-to-year and within the season itself. Price almost duplicated many key stats from 2011: walk and strikeout rates, BABIP, batting average-against, and others. He pitched into the seventh inning in 26 of his 31 starts. It's only a matter of time, and probably not much of it, before Price prices himself out of the Rays' market and perhaps wins his second Cy Young Award in another uniform.
2012		He posted a higher FIP than he did in 2010, a higher WARP than he did in 2010, and was rewarded with some of the worst run support in baseball. The result? A 12-13 season. In 11 of those 13 losses, the Rays provided Price with two runs or less of support, and were shut out in three of those contests. Only the miraculous comeback on the season's final game stopped him from earning a 14th no-run-support loss. Price's strikeout rate and walk rate both improved from 2010 but a spike in home runs slowed his overall gains a bit. He continues to dominate left-handed batters, holding them to a 508 OPS last season while allowing just 12 extra base hits in 230 at bats. The further development of his change-up will help against righties, who again slugged over .400 against him. Price got in just ahead of the Super Two cutoff, making him arbitration-eligible a season earlier than the organization would have liked. By the time you read this, we'll know just how escalated his salary will be from the $2.43M he made last year.
2011		In his first full major-league season, Price advanced leaps and bounds beyond his rookie year, living up to the hype that had made him one of the game's top prospects and establishing himself as one of the league's top lefty starters. With his once-vaunted slider having fizzled in 2009, he broke out a new curveball as his breaking pitch of choice, and he grew more efficient with his pitches and missing more bats. Integrating a two-seam fastball into his arsenal, he boosted his K/BB ratio, cut his homer rate in half, and wound up third in the league in ERA and fifth in hit rate. He received his due from the AL Cy Young voters, finishing second to Felix Hernandez, and it is not difficult to believe that he'll win his own hardware one of these days.
2010		The first overall pick of 2007 closed 2008 with a tantalizing post-season showing and entered the year ranked behind only Matt Wieters on our Top 100 Prospect list. Unwilling to get caught up in the hype, the Rays sent Price back to Durham during the season's first six weeks, and his initial results upon promotion were underwhelming: a 4.70 ERA and 1.5 K/BB ratio prior to the All-Star break. He improved markedly in the second half (4.27 ERA, 2.4 K/BB ratio) by pitching to contact more often; while his strikeout rate fell (9.6 to 5.9), his walk rate plummeted more drastically (6.3 to 2.5), and he produced more ground balls, allowing him to pitch deeper into games. The most troubling aspect of his season was his struggles with his vaunted slider, considered a plus-plus pitch by scouts; advertised as a knockout pitch, it generated swings and misses just 4.8 percent of the time, the fourth-lowest rate among pitchers who threw at least 200 sliders. He'll have to restore his feel for that pitch in order to fulfill the lofty explanations set for him.
2009		Everyone in the scouting community knew that he was the next best thing, and in October, Price proved it to the world. At this point, some feel that the Rays are in a bit of a Joba-quandary with Price; he could easily be among the most dominant relievers in the game, but his long-term value clearly lies in being a starter. If you want to nitpick a bit, the changeup is inconsistent, and as everyone saw, he can lose his command when he's jacked up and overthrowing, but everything else that you witnessed in October was real. Price is the best pitching prospect in the game, and he should be a perennial Cy Young candidate.
2008		The first overall pick last June, Price is believed to be a superior talent to former Tiger/current Marlins prospect Andrew Miller, another big, power college lefty who was considered the top talent in the 2006 draft. Price doesn't have as much juice on his fastball as Miller, but he has plenty, his slider is better, and his command is head and shoulders above Miller's. He could move very quickly and be a rotation stalwart alongside Kazmir, James Shields, and Matt Garza by 2009.

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PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Although he has not thrown an MLB pitch in 2024, David Price threw 35,350 pitches that were tracked by the PITCHf/x system between 2008 and 2022, all of them occuring in Spring Training. In 2022, he relied primarily on his Sinker (92mph) and Fourseam Fastball (93mph), also mixing in a Cutter (88mph) and Change (84mph). He also rarely threw a Curve (78mph).