Dodgers: Could David Price be deployed as a reliever in 2021?

The Los Angeles Dodgers unquestionably have the best pitching staff in Major League Baseball and it’s not particularly close.

Some will say the San Diego Padres can rival them, but how?

Yu Darvish has lacked consistency for years now, Chris Paddack and Dinelson Lamet are largely unproven, and Blake Snell has just one season in which he’s made over 30 starts.

We’re not saying they have a bad rotation, but come on. And their bullpen? It’s not good! At all!

The Dodgers have depth upon depth upon depth. They have a full rotation and more. They have a stacked bullpen with a number of leftover high upside guys.

That’s what helped them win the World Series, and then they managed to upgrade even further.

David Price could be considered one of those upgrades even though he was acquired before the 2020 campaign. He opted out of 2020 and will be back on the mound in 2021, but what will his role be? We’ve all assumed he’d be a starter, but what about some time in the bullpen?

Should the Dodgers deploy David Price as a bullpen weapon?

Remember 2008 David Price coming out of the bullpen for the Tampa Bay Rays in the playoffs? That was fun. While it wouldn’t be as electrifying in Los Angeles, the prospect of him entering games to deliver 1-2 crisp innings and shutting down the competition when needed sure sounds lovely.

He’s already made it clear he’s open to any role. When you have arms like Dustin May, Julio Urias and Tony Gonsolin, all of whom will need innings and are probably better suited as rotation pieces, you can’t ignore Price’s willingness to be flexible. After all, he’s only here for two more years and the aforementioned guys figure to be key pieces on the Dodgers for a while.

The most important aspect to factor in here is Price’s recent run ever since joining the Boston Red Sox. He hurled 230 innings in his debut season with them after signing a mega $217 million contract, but after that, he’s pitched in only 358 innings since the start of 2017. That’s an average of almost 90 innings over the last four years.

We’re not saying he’s incapable of stretching himself back out to be a starter and get back to his workhorse ways, but the circumstances certainly don’t make that a foregone conclusion. Additionally, he’s in his age-35 season, whereas Urias, May and Gonsolin are all 26 or younger.

Maybe the Dodgers will use him as a hybrid option. Perhaps he begins the year as a starter or as a reliever and gradually trends in the opposite direction as the season progresses. We’ve heard countless times that pitchers will not be hitting the max on their odometers, and there’s no reason to think Price would after he’s pitched in just 107.1 innings since the start of 2019.

This kind of flexibility would allow the Dodgers to do the same with May, Urias and/or Gonsolin and provide them with a good chunk of innings to further assist in their development. If Price is open to it, so should the Dodgers.

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