While we don’t yet know the full extent of David Price's injury, I'm not surprised it's happened and I won't be surprised it results in full-blown Tommy John surgery. 

If anything, this has been a long time coming.

Poor Price gets beat up for not winning in the postseason, but he's a major reason why the teams he's played for keep getting there. On average, he's logged over 220 innings in his last six seasons. A good amount of those innings have been under high stress, short rest circumstances. 

Just ask the 2015 Toronto Blue Jays, who rented and abused Price in their postseason run and pitched him out of the rotation on short rest before calling him out of the bullpen. That, along with the fact that Price is a strikeout pitcher. He doesn’t rely on contact, but on Ks.  And that often drives up his pitch count higher than some other pitchers who reach the same innings threshold. 

Over the last two seasons, we've wondered if the Price was wrong - health wise, that is. His velocity has trended down and his command has wavered. He's been more hittable. All that  and he's suffered previous elbow flare-up with the Tampa Bay Rays, Detroit Tigers and the Red Sox. 

If he is indeed injured, Boston will have a tough time filling in Price's spot. The loss of money and productivity isn't easy to fill (or stomach) for any team, but especially not for one in an American League that's seen a ramp-up in competitive acquisitions. 

The Yankees are retooling their pitching staff, while the Jays already have a healthy and dominant staff in place. Losing 200 innings of Cy Young-calibre ball is a punch in the Red Sox' gut now and well into 2018. 

That said, it’s not impossible to overcome this. The Sox have options to at least put a bandage over Price's absence. Guys like Steven Wright, Drew Pomeranz, Edwardo Rodriguez, Henry Owens, Brian Johnson, Roenis Elias and Hector Velazquez will all get a chance to shine. While they’re not Price’s calibre (who is?) they are mixed and matched enough to soak up innings. 

Sadly, this is how it goes these days...young arms with high power outputs are ridden hard until they break. Remember, the acquisition of Chris Sale was once seen as excessive. Now it seems like the working of an oracle. And yet I can't help but wonder if this will happen to him next, as Sale's pitching path seems to mirror that of Price.  

As a former pitcher myself and Price's former teammate, I'd rather see him hurt now, get the surgery and come back to dominate. That's better than dragging it out and play ineffectively only to end up getting the surgery anyways. 

Though I'm sure the rest of the teams in the American League would prefer the opposite.