David Price: Worthy of the Hype?

Last night, I had an opportunity to take in David Price's third start for the Durham Bulls (the Rays' Triple-A affiliate). Price's performance was decidedly a mixed bag. He gave up two runs on six hits in only four innings of work against a pretty light-hitting Indianapolis Indians team. Despite that mixed line, it was easy to see why he's so highly regarded with his 93-96 mph fastball and a slider that gave Indianapolis trouble all night.

His problem seemed to be that he just wasn't locating the slider all that well. That allowed the Indians to sit fastball and ding the ball up the middle. Though I'm not a scout, I do have a couple guesses as to why this was happening. His fastball may have been a little flat, making it hittable despite the good speed he was generating. It's also possible that he was tipping his pitches, letting Indianapolis lay off of the biting slider and wait for something they could deal with.

I don't want to be misleading about Price's start; he didn't actually have an awful game. He only let two runs cross in his four innings of work and Indianapolis only hit a couple of balls hard. Still, after the seeing numbers and reading the reports about how he'd dominated Single-A and Double-A this year, I was more than a little underwhelmed by the 6-foot-8 lefty last night.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure how useful he'd be for the Rays in any capacity for their stretch run, be it in the bullpen or the rotation. When he does get his issues ironed out, he's going to be a very good pitcher for the Rays. It just seems like that might take a bit longer than people expected.