Godspeed, David Price!

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.

  

The Water Cooler

SOMETHING BAD: I understand that Justin Verlander is the best starting pitcher in Major League Baseball.  I understand that he's an All-Star, workhorse, centerpiece of a franchise that you can build multiple championships around.  The numbers are undeniable.  He led the American League last year in strikeouts, innings pitched, and complete games.  He's also just two years removed from 2011 when he won the Cy Young AND the MVP award in the same freakin' season.  He's also bangin' Kate Upton, a Sports Illustrated supermodel.

Yeah, yeah, I get all that.  I just don't understand how you justify giving him $180 million over seven years.  Ladies and gentlemen, the new standard has been set: raise your kids to be starting pitchers in professional baseball.  They'll want to deviate and try some random crap like boy scouts or stamp collecting but you make sure you get their little asses back out in the yard and practice pitching!

Seriously?  One hundred and eighty milllionnnnnnnn duealllers!  I almost stroked out writing that!

The man works every five days, minimum.  If he gets hurt and misses a start or two, now we're paying a man $180 million to rub his hamstrings with petroleum jelly.  And he'll be able to buy that fancy petroleum jelly with the gold flakes in it.

I'm not going to look into the logistics of the contract, well, because I'm lazy and also I want to try and stifle my vomit this evening.  However, a basic mathematical breakdown goes something like this:

$180 mil over 7 years = $25.7 mil a season.  Verlander worked 238 innings last season in 33 games.  That's an average of 7.2 innings per game, which means that if he averages about the same pace this season that Verlander will be earning $107,983 per INNING and roughly $750,000 per GAME.

If I make $750,000 in my lifetime I've probably robbed a bank at some point and Verlander can potentially make that on a night he loses a baseball game.  Commence the jealousy-fueled hatred!


SOMETHING GOOD: UCLA has recently removed the man that was previously their men's head basketball coach and is now looking for a new man to take up that spot.  That man was rumored to be Butler's current head basketball coach, Brad Stevens.  But Stevens has come out today and said, "No dice" to UCLA.  I'm not really sure if he actually said, "No dice," but he's not taking the job.

I commend Stevens.  I always admire coaches sticking with the little guy that made them famous to begin with and not bolting to the first flashy name to open up.  You don't ever hear about Butler until it's NCAA Tournament time but when the big dance comes around, those scrappy bastards put on their best shoes.

Plus, leaving Butler and going to UCLA is like a "ruler in Hell, servant in Heaven" type of thing.  Why on Earth would you go to a place where you are always going to be compared to John Wooden, the greatest college basketball coach of all-time?  You're never going to fill those shoes.  Literally.  John Wooden had enormous feet.

I mean the man was so fiercely competitive that he lived until he was 99 years old.  99!  Give it up already and leave some air for the youth!


SOMETHING WEIRD: Tiger Woods is dating Lindsey Vonn.  Finally!  We've got that "Word's Greatest Golfer and World's Greatest Skier" pairing that we've always wanted!  When I first heard that they got together I wondered how they even met in the first place.  Then I remembered that one of the individuals is Tiger Woods and he probably met Vonn when he was banging her sister...or her mother...or both.

Things seem to be going well for Tiger.  He's number one on the PGA Tour again and he's dating a hot, young, blonde athlete.  But he used to be married to a hot, young, blonde model and that ended with a nine-iron through the back window of his SUV.  Remember ladies, once a cheater always a cheater and for Tiger's sake it can't feel good to get stabbed with one of those ski sticks.

Enjoy your Easter weekend, kids!