Following his start Monday, David Price sarcastically called himself soft.
The left-hander referred to himself as soft following a question about a line-drive he took off the forearm in the first inning.
"You know me, I'm the softest guy in this clubhouse," Price said. "If that bothered me, I would have been out of the game. I'm soft. It wasn't painful. I'm fine. If it was painful, I would have come out."
Price added: "I wasn't coming out of the game. I'd rather blow-out out there than come out. That's just where we're at."
On Tuesday, manager Alex Cora indicated Price's comments on being soft were sarcastic.
"I don't know. You've got to ask him. I actually laughed at it," Cora said. "Sometimes I'm sarcastic. You guys know it."
Cora doesn't seem to believe Price is soft, as he said if that is the case he wants five of them pitching on his staff.
"If that's soft, give me five soft guys every day because he can pitch," he said. "People don't understand what goes through the process to compete at this level. It's not that easy. It's not only physically, but to prepare for a game, to look at scouting reports and compete against the best of the best. This is MLB. Like my brother, who was in the news yesterday, I've got to talk to him. He always told me, he's like, 'There's a reason it's A-ball, Double-A, Triple-A. It's not 4-A. It's MLB. It's a lot different because this is the best of the best, and to compete at this level it takes a lot.' He does that on a daily basis."
Don't expect Cora to ask Price to change, either.
"Because when I got here at 1:30, everything was business as usual," he said. "There was no talk about whatever. We were preparing for a game, a big league game. He came in and did his job. Nothing changes. That is one thing that I like about our team and they took it by heart. Nothing that happens around us is going to dictate what we do on a daily basis. We have been very consistent so far. I know it's only one-third of the season, our third of the season, and we're very proud of how we've handled stuff and gone about our business."
While it seems Price constantly brings negative attention to himself, perhaps it's what he thrives off of, and in that case he really won't ever change.
