Despite all that potential and pedigree, Rodriguez hasn’t been able to put together a full season yet, thanks to ineffectiveness or, more recently, injuries. With most pitchers, it’s the elbow. With Rodriguez, it’s his knee, and that same knee has made sure that Rodriguez will have to wait until 2019 to pitch a full season in the majors.

What Went Right

Remember those incremental improvements? He had some more this year. His strikeout rate jumped up four percentage points from last year, settling at 25.8 percent, a career-high for the southpaw. This wasn’t just a fluke either – Rodriguez got more whiffs this year than he ever had. It showed in his great first half, as he held opposing hitters to a .219/.290/.416 line while notching 65 strikeouts in 61 innings. His best start of the year, however, came in the second half in Yankee Stadium, where he shut down New York’s offense for seven innings, and even touched 96 at one point.

With how bad the Red Sox have been in regards to developing starting pitching, this could honestly be listed as a minor miracle.

Rodriguez was, at the very least, a solid starting pitcher in 2017. He didn’t hurt you too much, his high points showed glimpses of what he could become, and he totaled more WARP this year than he had in the last two seasons combined. He’s getting there. Just give him time.

What Went Wrong

He might be getting there, but his knee is trying to trip him up every step of the way. Before his start on June 1st in Baltimore, Rodriguez fell over while warming up in the bullpen.

That looks pretty innocuous, right? Turns out it was a lot worse. Rodriguez’s start went poorly, and he was placed on the disabled list the very next day with a right knee subluxation. That right knee is also why he had a late start to the 2016 season, and why the Red Sox were worried about him when he was playing winter ball. He didn’t return until after the All-Star break, and other than a couple great starts, Rodriguez was hit-or-miss for the rest of the season, thanks to the instability of a balky knee that potentially affected everything from control to velocity.

Statistically, he didn’t really regress anywhere, but didn’t really improve some key parts of his game. Rodriguez still has issues getting grounders, and that put him at risk of turning into batting practice with all the homers the league was hitting. While the four home run game in Baltimore was a product of a hurt knee, being a fly ball pitcher with half your starts in Fenway Park isn’t a precursor for success. The improvement there will probably come, sure, but he wasn’t really a guy to induce a ton of grounders anyway, and the current homer-happy environment of MLB could really slow progress here.

What To Expect

That troublesome knee had to be fixed sooner or later, and the Red Sox decided on sooner.

Here you go … pic.twitter.com/WegxizvlJh

— Rob Bradford (@bradfo) October 17, 2017

Best guess? He won’t pitch until June, and that’s if everything goes as planned. Sometimes his rehab starts don’t go well, and he has to spend another week in Pawtucket to get sharp. That happened a few times in 2017, and as David Price so emphatically pointed out, Dennis Eckersley was not a fan of one of those starts. Regardless, it’ll be a while until we see Rodriguez take the mound in Boston.

It’s hard to predict how he’ll do coming back from that, but if he can get 120 innings in 2018, that has to be seen as a success, health-wise. As for performance, it’s probably not wise to bet against Rodriguez taking another step forward. Maybe he’ll start inducing weaker contact, and cut down on the homers. Maybe he’ll walk fewer batters while the strikeout rate keeps steady. Everything’s there for a breakout season, and were he a lock for the Opening Day roster, I’d probably say he’s due for it. We can only hope he comes back healthy for the long run, because if he keeps getting better at this pace, we might see yet another good left-handed starter in the Red Sox’s rotation.

Photo by David Kohl – USA TODAY Sports

One word, and a reasonable summary of what was being shown onscreen at the time, is what we are being told drove the recent David Price-Dennis Eckersley confrontation on the Red Sox’s plane a few weeks ago. A report from Dan Shaughnessy on Sunday night provided more details on the incident, and, as was the case when the initial, undetailed reports hit our news feeds, Price comes out looking really bad. He, and other Red Sox players, behaved like children and bullied Eckersley for doing his job:

On the day of the episode, Price was standing near the middle of the team aircraft, surrounded by fellow players, waiting for Eckersley. When Eckersley approached, on his way to the back of the plane (Sox broadcasters traditionally sit in the rear of the aircraft), a grandstanding Price stood in front of Eckersley and shouted, “Here he is — the greatest pitcher who ever lived! This game is easy for him!’’

When a stunned Eckersley tried to speak, Price shot back with, “Get the [expletive] out of here!’’

Many players applauded.

Eckersley made his way to the back of the plane as players in the middle of the plane started their card games. In the middle of the short flight, Eckersley got up and walked toward the front where Sox boss Dave Dombrowski was seated. When Eckersley passed through the card-playing section in the middle, Price went at him again, shouting, “Get the [expletive] out of here!’’

While the whole story is annoying, unfortunately I suspect it, like the chicken-and-beer of 2011, will be cited to explain poor play from the Red Sox going forward. The narrative is already unfolding. This is just another example of a thin-skinned, supremely rich athlete who cannot handle criticism, especially in Boston. But I am not sure this is an entirely accurate account of the situation. Of course David Price can handle criticism; he has been doing it for years. For me the more interesting question is: why is Price doing this?

Let’s start by discussing the ‘can’t handle criticism’ bit. Here is a simple fact: Price has been a top-flight major-league starting pitcher for the last ten years. This is why he was given the $217 million contract that is perpetually held against him. Starting pitchers, especially front-of-the-rotation starters like Price, are always the focal point of the game story on the days they pitch. Good, bad, or indifferent, they are certainly one of the players talking to the media after the game. If Price couldn’t handle criticism, he would have washed out of the league years ago. I recognize Boston is different from Tampa Bay, Detroit and Toronto, and every media outlet in Boston has a badge to show you that says so. But Price was on playoff-caliber teams in those cities and has been an extremely self-critical player. Until recently, he has not shied away from criticism. In a Red Sox uniform, there have been a number of occasions on which he was open about not being satisfied, even after a tremendous start (this is a decent example). Maybe his comments are all postgame cliché, but we seem content to bask in Chris Sale’s very similar post-start comments when he suggests he needs to be better after striking out 10 and giving up three runs over eight innings. You know, the ones that are evidence Sale was born to pitch in Boston. Well, that was Price not too long ago. But that is forgotten because Price has a huge contract and didn’t strike out 200 guys in fewer innings than anyone in the history of baseball.

Price knows when he has not pitched well and admits it. He knows he has not lived up to expectations in the postseason, and has signalled that to us through self-critical digs on Twitter. He cannot change his postseason performances past and no amount of reminding him about them is going to make it happen, or even contribute to the way he performs the next time he pitches in October. Yet, there remain people who think they can change minds and/or history by being an asshat on Twitter. I mean, yesterday, there were real live humans trying to convince Chad Finn that Xander Bogaerts is unlikeable. How do you reason with a line of thinking like that? Maybe Price, like all of us, needs to get off Twitter. The echo-chamber of a Twitter feed quickly makes a few voices seem like a majority. Again, I think Price can handle criticism just fine, but handling the nonsense he must be faced with regularly is next to impossible. Obviously some wingnut on Twitter is different from Evan Drellich, or Dan Shaughnessy, or Dennis Eckersley, but after a while I understand how it could all blend into one consistent stream of negativity. The Red Sox are a first place team, projected to win another division crown, yet everyday there is some new thing that is terrible about the team, and he is questioned about a minor aspect of a start, is reminded of his bank account, and/or postseason statistics.

Focusing on the innocuousness of Eckersley’s reaction to Eduardo Rodriguez’s junk outing misses the point. Sure it fits nicely into the ‘David Price can’t handle simple criticism’ narrative, but come on. I doubt Price was that riled up about Eck saying “yuck”. Rather, Eck doing so provided (another) salient opportunity for Price to draw a line between his team and someone criticizing them; this time it was Eckersley, who is reportedly not a Red Sox clubhouse favorite. I do not mean to dismiss what Price and his teammates did. Their actions were bad and they should feel bad. And they should absolutely be able to handle and respond to reasonable criticism of baseball-related activities. So, I just keep coming back to wondering this: why does Price think he needs to take a stand against the media?

Price has been open about his willingness to take crap for standing up for his teammates. This is the sort of thing that has contributed to him being known as a good clubhouse guy. Former teammate Chris Archer suggested Price was going to be a culture changer for the Red Sox. Are we seeing that now? Is this us-versus-them thing an attempt to coalesce the 2017 Red Sox group? Rally the troops to greatness? Are we nearing a Cortes burn-the-ships reference? For the most part, Price has caught the heat for this Eckersley incident but there were a group of Red Sox players who applauded. Have they bought in to the battle? While in Toronto, Price quickly became the ‘social-glue’ guy who bridged all the factions of the Blue Jays’ locker room. He did so with a much calmer approach, but is he trying to do something similar in Boston? Is he trying to fill the void left by noted leader David Ortiz? In case no one has mentioned it in the last five minutes, Ortiz retired last season, leaving the Red Sox’s offense in shambles. Is Price really willing to risk his image in the process, as he has with the way he behaved toward Eckersley? Of course, all of this is just my speculation into what is driving Price’s actions. But the being-a-good-teammate idea seems as reasonable to me as does his sudden loss of his ability to handle criticism.

While athletes fighting the Boston media has historically been a one-sided affair, there may be some method to his madness. The more hostile he is to criticism directed at him or his teammates, the more criticism will come. If you buy the ‘he can’t handle criticism’ angle, this makes him seem like a complete fool, but if he is trying to unite a clubhouse around a cause and take over the league then it only serves to embolden his group. Either way, it is going to be part of the 2017 Red Sox narrative when all is said and done.

Photo by Kim Klement – USA TODAY Sports