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Price Feeling Good, Not Worried About Leg

By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak

DETROIT - Starting pitcher David Price had a scary moment Friday, when he had to leave a game after stepping on a bat while covering home plate. An MRI revealed Price had suffered a mild strain of the right hamstring. In response, the Detroit Tigers pushed back Price's next start by a couple of days, but Price said Wednesday at the Detroit Economic Club meeting that he has no concerns about his leg.

"My health right now is fine," Price said during a question-and-answer session with players. "It's just not something that I think about whenever I'm going through all my exercises at the field or my workouts. My last few days have been very, very, very encouraging, so I'm not really worried about my right leg.

"If what happened didn't happen on the field the other day, I don't think that I would even really be thinking about what's going on in my leg throughout my workouts," Price continued. "If I feel it a little bit here or there, I wouldn't say anything to the training staff or really even think twice about what was going on, so I feel like I'm in a pretty good position both mentally and physically with my right leg right now."

Price, for whom the Tigers traded at the deadline last year, also talked about the transition of leaving the Tampa Bay Rays in the middle of the season and moving to Detroit.

"It's not something that I wanted to happen," Price said, "because I definitely loved being in Tampa. That was where I spent my entire minor and pro career, so just being with those guys, just the training staff, all the clubhouse guys, everybody that worked at the stadium, I was with those guys for six and seven years, so whenever you're with people for that long ... you have real relationships and tight friendships.

"It happened really fast," Price added. "Just one day, it was probably the last day I left the Trop [Tropicana Field], we were starting to play a little bit better, and people thought that we were going to kind of hang on to all the pieces that we had, see what we could do, and then 24 hours later, my agent gives me a call and says, 'Just be prepared. You're going to get traded within the next 30 minutes to an hour.'"

The crowd laughed as Price joked, "I got a solid one-hour heads-up on this."

As soon as Price got word he had been traded, he packed up and headed for Detroit.

"It was crazy," Price said. "But to  come to a team and an organization like the Tigers have, just to be around all these players that they have, Miggy and Victor and Ver, and Ian and Joe, just everybody - Last year was definitely tough for me, but this year has been a lot better, and I'm really enjoying it."

Through seven starts this season, Price has an ERA of 3.30 over 46 1/3 innings.

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