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HOUSTON – Never will the line of thinking that cast David Price and Clayton Kershaw as pitchers who can not win big games in October die, because to bury it a commitment of the fans to logical thinking, and a fundamental feature of fandom is blind, giddy, willful irrationality. Sports warps brains. It is mania and depression mainlined. Gray areas do not exist in the sporting world, which are why Price and Kershaw are banished to the netherworld of postseason rejects.
To be followed by a brilliant Kershaw playoff start with the end of one's career, then, made for a hearty helping of cognitive dissonance. Rest assured, this is no bizarro existence. It is baseball, a sport grounded in the unthinkable turning real. In, say, David Price sending the Boston Red Sox to the World Series.
Fifteen years ago today, remember, the notion of the Red Sox simply appearing in the World Series was laughable. They were still trailing the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series. Then, they'll get a crack at a fourth. That the cosmology of this run happens to include Price daring six shutout innings in Thursday night's 4-1, pennant-clinching victory in Game 5 of the ALCS against the Houston Astros is fitting, because a decade-and-a-half-long stretch of success comes as much as the routine does not, and David Price unleashes the finest start of his playoff career in this setting, at this time, is infinitely more the trainer than the latter.
"It's one of the most special days I've ever had on the baseball field," said Price in the afterglow of the Red Sox's Minute Maid Park in front of 43,210. The entire night, on the surface, was perfectly backward. Price, statistically the worst postseason starter in baseball history, with an 0-9 record and 6.16 ERA in playoff starts entering the game, was facing Justin Verlander, who entered with a scoreless streak of 24 innings in elimination games. It was a mismatch rooted far more in the past than the present.
And that's important to note when considering the 33-year-old priceers of the price and the 30-year-old Kershaw, the Los Angeles Dodgers ace more expensive playoff successes parasite. To say that in October Price and Kershaw have not pitched up to their standards, or in some cases are well, is true. To say they can not be wrong. Have you know what? S already etched in stone. Can not falsely foretells an unwritten future. It presupposes that they are incapable of learning, evolving, doing all of the things that they have won.
David Price and Boston Red Sox Pitching Coach Dana LeVangie's plan. (Getty Images)
It blatantly ignores what Price did Thursday. Not just limit the Astros to three hits while striking out nine and walking none. Those numbers were a function of an approach of the previous stages of the world. He had started in his major league career – that is the future of the future. .
After his first start in Game 2 of the Division Series, where he was last pitched, Price and Red Sox pitching coach Dana LeVangie discussed the possibility of him relying more on his changeup. This was no small ask. Changeups are the ultimate feel pitch. They require supreme amounts of self-assurance to throw. Salivate hitters over bad changeups, which hover the strike zone line batting-practice fastballs. To throw more changes would take a confidant David Price. A confident David Price in October was an oxymoron.
The first time he faced the Astros, in Game 2 of the ALCS. He got one of those by the second batter of Game 5. And then another the next inning. And as the game wore on, as he matched Verlander zero for zero, another and another. And by the end of his night, when Alex Cora's Red Sox manager dared not be tempted and subject.
"He did not miss ounce," Red Sox starter Rick Porcello said. "That's above and beyond. In the regular season, you're thinking about mechanics and your catcher. Postseason it's all about competing. your [expletive] that day is your [expletive] that day. It depends on what you bring. And he brought it. "
He was not the only one. Even though Boston won a major league- and franchise-best 108 games this season, and held home-field advantage, it has entered the ALCS an underdog to the Astros. They were the defending World Series champions. They swept a dangerous Cleveland Indians team in their Division Series. They went star-for-star with the Red Sox. And, in particular, they were not committing a pair of starts with price's postseason pedigree.
Which again reminds the nonsensical lens through which the postseason is viewed, as well as possible performance. Maybe if they like it, they have been intransigent – if they insisted it was bad luck or a bad pitch or something that did not require reflection. Billy Beane famously said: "My [expletive] does not work in the playoffs. "David Price's [expletive] had not worked in the playoffs, so, so he changed his [expletive].
The conviction came from a tune-up the day before. Boston had weathered a Game 1 loss at Fenway Park to strike back in Game 2, not securing Price his first postseason victory as a starter but more important salvaging a split. The Red Sox won Game 3, too, and with Game 4's late-inning lead in the heldous hands of Closer Craig Kimbrel, Price warmed up in the bullpen, testing the changeup that earlier in the day had looked so good after he tweaked its grip , Cora ready to summon him as a secondary stopper. Kimbrel never broke. Price would start Game 5 instead, and with far better feel than he'd had recently.
Game 5 provided the perfect setting for the hatch Price and LeVangie's plan. Even though it was pitching on three days' rest, Price came out more likely than Houston expected. His changeup settled around 86.5 mph, and the feckless swings it generated a David Price's reminder [expletive] could, in fact, work in the playoffs.
"It was filthy," LeVangie said. "It was absolutely filthy. I saw it in the bullpen. But again, he brought out a pitch that he did not show these guys last time, and he absolutely dominated with it. "
It was, as Astros manager AJ Hinch said, "a championship-caliber performance." Cora, too, made sure to shout out his starter, saying: "Tomorrow we can turn the page and move on to the World Series with David Price. "Inside both clubhouses, Price was the story, not just because it was a tough one, but it was difficult to win. .
It's not that the Golden Astros Milwaukee Brewers, who Kershaw limited to one on three hits with nine strikeouts in a Game 5 win Thursday, were happy to be on the other side of great starts. They just recognize the difficulty of the game, understand the two pitchers as well as the elite of the elite – especially the elite of the elite – can earn a reputation that does not fit his standing in the game.
At the moment, the Red Sox's fits. They beat down the 100-win New York Yankees. They dispatched the 103-win Astros. They are 5-0 on the road this postseason. They feel home to the Astros with four consecutive victories. Before the regular season, Price said, at a dinner with a few players, Cora asked: "If you want a World Series, raise your hand." This was no rah-rah, team-building exercise. It was an imperative, an expectation.
And now they're there, Game 1 of the World Series on Tuesday at Fenway against the winner of the Dodgers-Brewers series. They're going because J.D. Martinez was gifted to no-strike call on what should have been a punchout looking at the next pitch in the Crawford Boxes in left field. And because third baseman Rafael Devers, all of 21 years old, added insurance with a three-run shot in the same neighborhood in the sixth. And because after Matt Barnes, Mara Gonzalez, Cora used his projected Game 7 starter, Nathan Eovaldi, to a fireball Alex Bregman. And because Kimbrel, believing he had corrected pitch-tipping problems, worked a scoreless ninth inning to kick off the celebration.
From it, Price took nothing materially special. Pookie Jackson as a memento. What was really special would remain in his head, his heart, his left arm, the three of which collaborated on a gem of a performance.
To summon this again is no guarantee. That's pitching. That's baseball. It's a trite thing to say, but then it's the feeling that David Price can not be pitched in and Clayton Kershaw can not be pitched in and ______________ can not ______________ in October. It's a Mad Lib that belongs in the recycling bin. They can. They did. One of them is going to the World Series. The other may well meet him there.
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