The Price may be wrong for the Red Sox, but so what?
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COMMENTARY
Baseball’s World Series begins Tuesday, and Boston clearly couldn’t give a damn.
Can you blame us? What with the perfect Patriots preparing for the Miami Dolphins on Thursday, the Celtics kicking off their 2015-16 season Wednesday against the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Bruins continuing to search for their identity Tuesday evening against the Arizona Coyotes, our peripheral interest just isn’t keen on the Kansas City Royals and New York Mets, no matter how intriguing a matchup it may be.
As far as baseball here is concerned, attention has shifted to the offseason, where Red Sox fans are watching the newly-aligned front office with a dubious eye, particularly after back-to-back last-place finishes in the American League East. And that of course brings us to the matter that new president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski has inherited the challenge of inserting a front-line starter in a rotation that former general manager Ben Cherington built like a house of straw with the wolf advancing. Not to mention the overhaul of a bullpen that posted a 4.24 ERA in 2015. Only Colorado, Atlanta, Oakland, and Detroit posted worse numbers.
Detroit. Hmm. Who built that bullpen?
Dombrowski, of course, also traded for — and dealt — free agent pitcher David Price, who figures to attract plenty of interest this offseason from a number of teams, including the Red Sox. The price tag? Somewhere north of $200 million or so.
No, thanks? Not so fast.
There’s spending money on the free agent market, and there’s wasting money foolishly on the same landscape. You only have to go back to last season’s disastrous signings of Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval to understand where the Red Sox front office had clearly lost its way. That has led to a lot of fans fearing the worst; signing Price could be a disaster.
Or not.
Starting pitcher Max Scherzer, who signed a seven-year, $210 million contract last offseason with the Washington Nationals, went 14-12 in 2015 for his new team, after spending the previous five years going 82-35 for the Detroit Tigers. Yeah, big deal, but…
Scherzer proved to be a dominant force in a return to the National League, where he pitched with the Arizona Diamondbacks, who drafted him with the 11th pick in the 2006 Major League Baseball draft. He finished eighth in the National League with a 2.79 ERA, was fourth in WHIP at 0.92, and was second only to Clayton Kershaw with his 276 strikeouts. Nobody had as many no-hitters (two) as Scherzer did in 2015, including his 17-strikeout gem against the New York Mets last month, an outing that some have already considered one of the greatest pitching performances of the modern era.
He made $1.2 million for that win alone, the same amount as he earned in each of the remainder of his victorieswith the Nationals.
That’s well-shy of the $2 million per win that Kershaw got with the Los Angeles Dodgers, but then again, Scherzer will make Kershaw’s $32.6 million salary last season look stupid in only four years when he’s raking in $42.1 million in each of the final three years of his deal with Washington, which expires in 2021, when Scherzer will only be 36 years old.
Of course, Kershaw made it to the postseason with the Dodgers, while Scherzer’s Nationals collapsed in the NL East, where the upstart Mets have continued their run all the way to the World Series.
Then again, of the 16 starting pitchers that made more than Scherzer in 2015, only six made the playoffs (not including New York Yankees CC Sabathia and Masahiro Tanaka, because the wild card game shouldn’t count) with their respective teams; Kershaw, Zack Greinke, Jon Lester, Mark Buehrle, Adam Wainwright, and Price.
The Royals and Mets had the 16th and 21st-highest payrolls, respectively, heading into 2015, while only the Dodgers, Texas Rangers, and Toronto Blue Jays (again, not counting New York’s play-in game), made the playoffs of teams with baseball’s top-10 payrolls.
Greinke and Price are set to cash in this offseason as free agents. Greinke was 19-3 with an NL-leading 1.66 ERA in a season for the ages with the Dodgers. But he just turned 32 last week, and his history with anxiety and clinical depression is well-documented, making the pressure cooker atmosphere of Boston an unlikely option, unless Dombrowski gets out of control with John Henry’s money.
The righty made two starts for the Dodgers in the NLDS this month, going 1-1 with a 3.29 ERA. Greinke was good, not great, in both starts, and is 3-3 with a 3.55 ERA lifetime in the postseason.
Price can only dream of possessing such stats.
While the lefty went a combined 18-5 this past season for the Tigers and Blue Jays, his October was a borderline disaster, hardly easing the fears of general managers who might be wary of giving him $200 million-plus this offseason with playoff yips on his resume. Price is 2-7 with a 5.12 ERA lifetime in the playoffs. He allowed 36 earned runs in 63 1/3 innings pitched this October with the Blue Jays, ousted from the postseason by the Royals in Game 6 of the ALCS. In that game, Price started and gave up five hits and three runs over 6 2/3 innings.
Meh.
When it comes to the Red Sox’ offseason needs though, Price fits the mold more than any other free agent pitcher on the open market. Royals pitcher Johnny Cueto also figures to make in the same ballpark as Price and Greinke, but is coming off an unimpressive second half with Kansas City (4-7, 4.76), and has been hit-or-miss this month in the playoffs. In contrast, Price has pitched the majority of his career in the AL East with the Tampa Bay Rays, would give the Sox the ace they’ve desperately missed since Lester skipped town last year, and would likely be a shoo-in for 200 innings, something no Sox pitcher managed last season.
The cost? Ridiculous but not prohibitive.
The philosophy? It will be of ultimate interest to see if the Red Sox do an about-face on Henry’s mantra that he’d prefer not to sign pitchers over the age of 30 to long-term deals. With good reason. They almost always turn out to be a complete shell by the end of the deal. Then again, Rick Porcello was a puddle at the beginning of his deal. But he was 26 though, so…
The most expensive pitcher still playing in the final week of October? Try 42-year-old Bartolo Colon, who made $11 million last season. For Kansas City, it’s 36-year-old Jeremy Guthrie, who pulled in $9 million and isn’t even on the Royals’ postseason roster.
It’s hard to argue that Scherzer wasn’t worth the money last season, when he made just north of $17 million. But that number increases to $22.1 million for each season through 2018 before the $42.1 million comes into play in 2019. Scherzer could win 20 games each of those seasons and make $2.1 million per win. Then again, if Porcello repeats his win total of nine whole wins in 2016, when his salary gets a bump to $20.1 million, he’ll earn $2.2 million per victory.
Which was $2 million better spent? And should Price’s postseason record even matter to a team that hasn’t been there since winning it all in 2013?
You have to get there first. And while Price would break the mold of the Red Sox’ free agent contracts, isn’t the potential for another basement finish impetus to bust out of what you think has been working?
MLB’s all-New England team
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Contact Eric Wilbur at: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @GlobeEricWilbur
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