I am in a state of remiss and for that I must apologize.
The Tampa Bay Rays decided to trade David Price in the Zero Hour of the Major League Baseball trade deadline and I sat there for a second, soaked it all in, and then promptly went to get drunk.
The conundrum that faced the Rays and the solution that they inevitably came to was not exactly how I would have dealt with the problem. The Rays would, in due time, owe David Price a lot of money because he's a left-handed ace entering the prime of his career. Due to the dichotomy of the MLB the Rays do not have a lot of money they can spend on one player thus the conundrum: trade him and get value now or keep him and compete this year.
A month ago I would have helped him pack. The Rays sucked, you read it, right? But then my resilient little team of never-say-die came back and they are right back in the thick of things. The thick of things in this scenario is most likely a wild-card spot and that might even mean the second wild-card spot which would entail a must-win game for the right to travel to maybe Anaheim or Oakland or some really tough spot to win like that. The point is that wouldn't do enough for a fan base like the fan base that the Tampa Bay Rays have. Simply put just making it to an early round playoff exit wouldn't increase the fortitude, the payroll, or the fan-ship of a team like the Rays. In essence, nobody cares.
And this breaks my heart.
In the days boiling down to the trade deadline I was very staunch in the idea that the Rays would keep David Price. I understood that his value would never be as high as it would be right before. I also understood that if the Rays kept him through the year he would garner no trade value. But I also understood that our best chances for post-season success was with our best pitcher and the Rays should just go for broke. Put it all on the line THIS year. As a lifelong Rays fan I can honestly tell you that I would be okay if the organization decided to keep him this year in an effort to win the World Series. Forget the speculated prospects, the money we will save, and all the other fiscally sound moves. I want a banner...and not one of those stupid 'Participant' ones. If Price left and we didn't win or get anything for him at least I would know we tried to actually win, dammit!
Sabermetrics isn't good enough for me. Being just good enough to be competitive isn't cutting it anymore. Johnnie Cochran once said, "If you ain't got the dough, you will never go!" I'm just kidding, he never said that, but if he had he'd be exactly right.
Before the trade there was renewed energy in the team...I could feel it and I live two hours away! Price was a Cy Young winner, a leader on the team, and a leader in the clubhouse. He took his usual starting role the day before the trade deadline which is usually a sign that a player is staying put but he got roughed up by the Brewers. I casually mentioned how much that would suck if that was his last start in a Rays jersey because I fully expected to see him in five days.
I was wrong. David Price got traded to the Detroit Tigers in an almost 'Cold War worst nightmare' type of deal. Hands wavered over the trigger button only to drop in the last second. I'm not even going to go into length on the players that the Rays got in exchange for Price because, no, it's not enough. They got David Price and we got Not David Price. That equation is pretty simple.
Price will make his debut for the Tigers on Tuesday against the New York Yankees.
And this makes me sick to my stomach.
That's our boy and now we get to sit here and watch him play for a team in Michigan that doesn't truly appreciate him. Don't get me wrong, I'm fully aware that they're fully aware of who David Price is. They know about his dominant year a few years ago when he was a 20 game winner. They probably even knew he was leading the league in strike outs this year. They know he went to Vanderbilt, school for nerds, and he's damn proud of it.
But they'll never look at him like we look at him. We look at him and we just beam. That's our boy.
The fact that the powers that be made it so that David Price couldn't be a Ray for life is something I'll have to deal with for a long, long time. And I think eventually I'll get past it but today is a dark day and it's going to be dark for a little while. I wish him nothing but the best and I miss him terribly.
I don't know if I'll watch his start on Tuesday. It still feels a little personal to me.
It's completely against journalistic strategy to bring up an entirely new point at the very end of a piece you wrote but I like breaking the rules so I'm going to end on this:
Small teams end up being bad teams that end up celebrating by drafting good players that turn into great players just in time to hand them over to the big teams and the system feeds itself by chumps like me throwing peanuts at the television and consequently hating myself at the same time.
The good news is, kids, you don't have to pick your hero right away because the way the market shifts he might end up being your enemy. You get to give it about six or seven years before you realize you're part of the problem and just go with it or you're like me and just not know what to do other than air your grievances on a blog that gets more international fame than ice cubes. Seriously, they don't use them over there.
