Felger On David Price: 'He's Going To Hate It Here'
BOSTON (CBS) -- The Red Sox signed arguably the very best starting pitcher available on the free-agent market. Huzzah!
Well ... not exactly.
Michael Felger and Tony Massarotti were on the air when news broke on Tuesday afternoon that David Price and the Red Sox agreed to a seven-year, $217 million contract. That's $31 million per year.
Felger & Mazz gave their initial, gut reactions.
"I would have preferred something else, [like] if you could have gotten a good pitcher in his 20s." Massarotti said. "Thirty-one million bucks. You have every right to be skeptical and cynical and critical of this deal. You have every right to. But they needed a front-end guy, and they had no other way to get him."
Felger's instant reaction?
"Not gonna work," he said. "He's gonna hate it here. He's going to hate it here. He hates it here now. He doesn't like it here. He doesn't pitch well under pressure. This is a guy that reads his Twitter feed like [Curt] Schilling."
Felger then clarified that Schilling pitched excellently under pressure but only reverts to childish behavior on the Internet. Price, on the other hand?
"This guy is a 6-year-old on Twitter and doesn't pitch well under pressure, in the big moment. It's just a recipe for disaster. This is not his kind of place."
Mazz disagreed with Felger.
"I have less of an issue with the whole Boston thing than you do," Mazz said. "You need a guy who can win you 17, 18 games in the regular season. You need that. ... Now, you want to tell me that the contract is stupid? Yup. You want to tell me that there's a huge question as to whether this guy will ever be able to pitch in the postseason? Yup."
Felger could not get over Price's 5.12 career postseason ERA.
"Aye aye aye. It ain't going to work," Felger reiterated. "You just made him the highest-paid pitcher in the history of Major League Baseball."
It is, quite obviously, a major change in philosophy from the not-too-distant past when the Red Sox claimed paying top dollar for pitchers over 30 was an imprudent business practice.
"Doesn't it shake your confidence in their plan over there, whatever it is?" Felger said. "If you're going to spend on a pitcher who's in and around 30 for one of those big contracts, isn't Jon Lester the perfect guy? The perfect guy. Proves he can pitch in this town in that park, proves he can pitch in those situations, tough, durable, perfect. So the fact that you won't sign Jon Lester tells you that philosophically, you think those contracts for those players are stupid. OK, fine. The track record and the history actually bears that out. Good philosophy! No problem. The very next year you sign someone the same age who does not have half the track record, for the highest and most expensive contract in the history of Major League Baseball at that position? You have no clue. You have no plan."
Watch the full discussion in the video above.
