Price gives boost to Rays 'pen

David Price (left) rebounded from a shaky start to close out the Rays' Game 2 win on Thursday night. Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- David Price was nervous, and with good reason. In Game 2 of the World Series on Thursday night the Rays' 23-year-old star of the future became the man of the moment when he took the mound to face Phillies star Chase Utley with two outs in the seventh inning, a runner on second and the Rays leading 4-0 but trailing in the Series 1-0. Price threw Utley four fastballs, each about 94 or 95 miles per hour, and none of them over the plate.

As Utley jogged to first and Ryan Howard strolled to the plate, Tampa Bay catcher Dioner Navarro approached Price and asked, "Are you going to throw a strike or what?"

"He made me laugh, which is what I needed," said Price, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2007 draft. "I guess it's because the patch on my arm says World Series."

Price then settled down and gave the Rays exactly what they needed. Facing the formidable Howard, Price jumped ahead 0-2 with a pair of wicked sliders. With the count even at 2-2, he returned to the slider for a called third strike to retire the side. Price would pitch the final two innings as well, allowing two hits and two runs, and retiring Utley (on a three-pitch strikeout) and Howard (on a groundout) to finish the game.

"The guy's amazing," said Rays starter James Shields, who earned the Game 2 win. "He's got a 96-mile-per-hour heater and an 89-mile-per-hour slider -- how could you not have confidence in the guy?"

A starter in the minors, the fast-working Price has adapted beautifully to his new role as relief ace. He says manager Joe Maddon gives him a lot of time to warm up in the bullpen, often five or six outs' notice, and that he doesn't bother to pace himself once he enters the game.

"He's very versatile and very talented," pitching coach Jim Hickey said. "That's why he was the No. 1 overall pick."

And it's why the Rays can feel good about any late lead in this World Series.

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Price was a no-show for the installation of his locker in Vanderbilt's Hall of Legends.

This was no slight to his alma mater -- he's actually rather fond of Vandy -- but for the first time in company history his new employer was still doing meaningful work in autumn.

So as Price was celebrated in Nashville on Oct. 17, a date that had never before posed a conflict with the Rays' season, Tampa Bay's ace-in-waiting was celebrated nationally on Sunday after completing a four-out save to beat the Red Sox and send the Rays to the World Series. On Monday, Price and a few teammates introduced Sen. Barack Obama at a campaign rally in town.

"That brought him out to the public a little bit, but he was always that person to us," said Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin, who emailed Price pictures of the event in Nashville. "He'll always be a baseball hero."

"It's awesome," Price said. "Vanderbilt wasn't a place where people even thought about baseball. Now it's one of the powerhouses in the country."

Vanderbilt pitching coach Derek Johnson first noticed the tall, lanky lefty from nearby Murfreesboro, Tenn., as early as Price's freshman year of high school and really started to zero in on him as a sophomore because of "his size and the fact that he throws with the wrong hand and just his looseness -- you could see that [the ball] came out [of his hand] pretty good back then but that it'd come out even better in a couple or three years," said Johnson.

"He was just one of those guys you could really dream on. Here's a guy who's in our backyard, and we've got to keep him around."

It was during Vanderbilt's courtship of the prized lefty that Corbin got his first glimpse of Price's all-consuming competitiveness.

"He wins everything he puts his hands on," Corbin said. "I saw him play a lot of basketball when we were recruiting him, and he's a tremendous three-point shooter. There was a part of you that was like, Wow, this kid could play college basketball too. In any competition that we had among our baseball players that didn't have anything to do with baseball, he still was competing. I think he could be a Division I quarterback, and all those Madden games he plays all the time -- he wins them all too."

Like any competitor, Price wants the ball in key spots, but as he explained in a teleconference on Monday he's happy to win whether he throws one pitch or one hundred pitches.

"He's a very unique creature," said Corbin, who also coached Price with Team USA's gold medal-winning squad at the FISU World University Championships in Cuba two years ago. "He's gifted with the 'we' mentality. When he wasn't pitching, he was the bat boy."

Corbin paused, before continuing with a rising tone of admiration.

"I'll tell you another thing about the kid," he said. "Every time he's not in the game, he does not miss a pitch. He watches the whole game. I've never seen a kid like that. He's like a seven-year-old sitting down in front of a baseball game and won't take his eyes off the game. He's into every thing that's happening on that field. You cannot catch him off-guard. His concentration level is superior to everyone I've ever been around."

When Corbin's effusive praise was relayed to Price, the pitcher seemed to squirm out of natural humility and promptly denied the bat boy story with a laugh and an eye roll.

"With Team USA, when we were in Cuba, we didn't have anybody to get the bats, so I went out and brought the bats back," Price explained, referring to the Americans' gold-medal winning performance at the World University Games. "Coach started calling me the bat boy."

But he does make a special point of paying careful attention to the ballgame.

"You don't have to live through experiences to learn from them," said the soft-spoken Price. "You can watch other people go through stuff and learn for yourself. That's what I try to do out there, and Coach Corbin taught me a lot about that."

During Game 1 Price learned by watching Phillies ace Cole Hamels, calling him one of the best pitchers in the majors and adding, "I wish he'd give me his change-up."

Price has managed rather well with what he's got: a high-90s fastball, a lethal high-80s slider and a good-but-not-quite-Cole-Hamels change-up. Everything about his first year in professional baseball suggested he'd be a major league star -- someday, not today. In being named USA Today's minor league player of the year, Price cruised through High-Class A ball in Vero Beach, Double A in Montgomery and Triple A in Durham, putting together a 12-1 record with a 2.30 ERA, a 1.13 WHIP and 109 strikeouts in 109 2/3 innings.

It's that talent, regardless of experience, that gave the Rays the confidence to throw him into the fire of the ALCS. He retired Jacoby Ellsbury in the eighth inning of Game 1, pitched 2/3 of the 11th inning in Game 2 to get the win and then was called upon to squelch a dangerous Boston threat in Game 7 with J.D. Drew batting and the Rays clinging to a 3-1 lead with two outs in the eighth.

"It was bases loaded, and I'm the rookie out there," Price said. "The pressure was all on me until I threw that first pitch slider for a strike, and then the pressure goes to him because I proved to him that I can throw it for a strike and that's my out pitch. If I can get him to swing at my out pitch, like I did on 0-1, then that's a big swing right there."

His performance did not go unnoticed by the Phillies, who said on Tuesday that preparing for Price would be especially difficult given the small sample of video available. They were right.

Maddon has avoided giving Price a title like closer, set-up man or lefty specialist because he could be used as any of those. At least Maddon has a model to look at. As the Angels bench coach in 2002 he worked with another untested rookie reliever, Francisco Rodriguez, who played a key role for that year's World Series winner.

But how and when the young hurler pitches seem secondary to Price, who for now is only interested in one thing: "A world championship," he said. "Hopefully we'll win it in five games now."

The Rays hope that Price is right.