David Price's time as a Toronto Blue Jay will not be remembered for his September 16th start in Atlanta on a Wednesday night when he struck out nine hitters and allowed a single run in a dazzling pitching display. It also won't be remembered for his rather mediocre start in Game 1 of the ALDS against the Texas Rangers where he allowed five runs in seven innings. Heck, it probably won't even be remembered for his horrid seventh inning just five days ago in Game 2 of this very ALCS. Many years down the road, David Price's relatively short time with the Blue Jays will be remembered for whatever he does from 8:07pm onwards on October 23rd in Kansas City.
Sure, there may be some hyperbole involved. But that's the nature of the playoffs in professional sports, where players are only remembered as heroes based off of their postseason performances. Daniel Murphy anyone? Price is a very good pitcher and will make oodles of money this offseason in free agency. But if he continues his bad run of postseason form in tomorrow night's game, he will always be thought of in Toronto as a worse pitcher than he actually is.
Even the team that traded away Daniel Norris, Jario Labourt, and Matt Boyd at the trade deadline will never feel they got full value out of their rental if all they received in return was 11 strong regular season starts and a few dramatic side sessions during massive playoff games. It's a cruel twist of fate that his mark left in Toronto will be determined based off just a small amount of innings, but wherever there's a Madison Bumgarner who becomes a playoff hero, there's always a goat who receives more blame than he deserves. For a team that has had Marcus Stroman and Marco Estrada answer the call in a big way recently, it looks destined to be Price who takes a large share of the blame should the Jays lose in the next two games.
Of course narratives are born out of extremely small samples in the playoffs and Price may end up falling victim to this unfortunate reality, but he certainly hasn't looked good recently and he has no one to blame but himself. As the lefty loves to say, "If you don't like it, pitch better". David Price gets one more chance, tomorrow night, to pitch better. The memory of him as a Toronto Blue Jays player rests on it.