MLB Playoffs 2016: 3 reasons the Red Sox will make it

David Price is dealing

David Price was looking like this year’s version of a Boston free-agent signing gone wrong. At the All-Star break, he was 9-6 with an elevated 4.34 ERA. If the numbers had held, Price would have been in line for the worst season of his professional career.

It’s not that Price was pitching poorly for the first three months of the season. He was getting his fair share of strikeouts and limiting walks. There just seemed to be a few extra well-struck balls coming against him each game. Pitching success can largely be dependent on luck at times, and the new ace of the Red Sox was giving up a very high batting average on balls in play — as high as .377 in July.

Being ever so slightly off with the command of his cutter was allowing hitters to get that much more of the barrel on his pitches. Baseball is a game of inches.

In the second half, Price has turned it around. He is 7-2 with a 3.30 ERA and looked much more like himself. He is coming off a five-run outing against the New York Yankees, but prior to that hiccup, had not given up more than two earned runs in his last six starts. The $217-million man seems to have ironed out what was bothering him early in the year, and will now have to set his sights on the postseason where he has struggled throughout his career.

With Price pitching well again, Rick Porcello looking like a Cy Young candidate, and Eduardo Rodriguez figuring things out, the Red Sox have a very formidable top-three in their rotation. In the postseason, that can be enough to get by.