Buster Olney of ESPN Insider talked about the “bind” the Rays are in now that Price is hurt. Olney quotes rumors across baseball that Price’s triceps injury is really a euphemism for his shoulder and that the injury combined with his reduced fastball velocity and usage could be a cause for real concern. And if Price fails to regain his 2012 form after he comes back, Olney states that the Rays would be stuck in a situation similar to the spot to the one that the Minnesota Twins were in with Johan Santana. Should that happen, the Rays may be forced to either trade Price for a lesser return or keep him and his high salary for one more year hoping he will reestablish his value, risking his value dropping even more should he not return to ace form. Could this injury be the start of a disastrous series of events that leaves the Rays with a pitcher they thought was an ace that suddenly no one wants to trade for?

The big thing to notice about Olney’s comments was that they only pertain to a particular scenario: that Price comes back and still isn’t the same. Olney talks about how the Rays don’t have much time for him to reestablish his value before the trade deadline. However, that’s almost entirely irrelevant. Who said the Rays are going to be out of contention by the trade deadline? They’re at .500 now, everybody. It’s far too early to count this team out. It was always exceedingly unlikely that the Rays were going to trade Price at the trade deadline. Really, Price has the rest of the season to get back on track if he needs its–and there’s a good chance that he’ll come back and resume looking like a topflight pitcher anyway.

But it isn’t just a matter of performance–Santana managed a 3.33 ERA in 219 innings pitched in his final year as a Twin. Doesn’t Price have to not only pitch well but show improved velocity to restore his trade value? Yes, but the probability of that happening is much higher than you might think. Olney quoted a stat that Price’s fastball velocity was down form 95.5 MPH to 92.8–but that’s a misleading stat because that’s the four-seamer that Price rarely uses. His two-seamer has seen a more modest drop from 95.3 MPH to 93.6 MPH, still noticeable but more modest. And whatever is causing Price’s reduced velocity, whether it’s his triceps (or shoulder) or otherwise, now he has time to get it back to 100% and hopefully return at full strength. Price will be fine performance-wise, and the chances of him getting his velocity back are relatively high as well.

The Rays have reason to be concerned about David Price both as a pitcher and as a trade chip. It’s certainly not a good thing that Price is going on the DL and that his velocity has been reduced all season. However, it’s certainly too early to think that his trade value is going to be diminished significantly by what’s going on and the Rays have to expect that Price will revert back to normal when he returns. If Price comes back and still isn’t the same, then the Rays will be in a tough spot. But let’s see if that actually happens before we speculate about how this injury pertains to the return the Rays will get in a deal and just worry about how he will do when he returns to the mound for the Rays.

And for a while, as it got closer to the start of the season, rumors of a Price trade died down. It felt as though it was realized that he would remain in Tampa at least through 2013, and trade rumors could rest until November. Then the Rays got off to a slow start, and the rumors started up once again. Speculation has begun once again as to what Price could command on the trade market, despite the fact that the Rays were considered a strong playoff contender to begin the season.

Even though Price has struggled, the Rays have fought back out of the hole they had dug themselves into at the start of the season, hovering around the .500 mark. In a division that is anticipated to be closely contested, it is very unlikely that a team breaks away from the pack this season. Also, with the added Wild Card, the Rays would likely need to be suffering through a truly disappointing year for Price to be an option at the trading deadline.

However, looking at the trade of James Shields for parallels, it seems rather unlikely that they would move Price at the deadline, even if they were struggling. First, moving Price in the middle of the season could cause issues with the remaining starters, as they have to suddenly get acclimated to a different role than what they had during the season. Second, it could potentially limit the possible teams that may be willing to trade for him. If Shields had been moved at the deadline last year, would the Royals have been interested and pulled the trigger, as they were not a threat for the playoffs at the time?

As Robbie had asked previously, will there ever going to be a good time to trade Price? Perhaps not. Trading one of the best pitchers in the American League, if not all of baseball, is never an easy proposition. This would be especially true for a team as reliant upon it’s pitching staff as the Rays are. However, it is far too early in the season to be thinking of trading perhaps the best pitcher on the team.

So, enough of the David Price trade rumors already. If the Rays are continuing to struggle closer to the trade deadline, then this topic can certainly be revisited. However, April is far too early in the season to be thinking about such moves.

Why didn’t the Rays trade Upton? Because they believed that his contributions to their team were worth more than any trade offer they received, and their reward for sticking with him was a compensatory first round pick in this year’s MLB Draft. Did the Rays make the right decision? We can’t be sure what the Rays would have gotten for Upton and only time will tell what the compensation pick will turn into. What we do know, though, is that the Rays sticking with Upton until the end was the only thing that kept them in contention in 2012 as Upton caught fire at the end of 2012 and without him the Rays certainly would have nailed down their third straight 90-win season (although not a playoff berth). What does any of this have to do with David Price? Over the coming years, the Rays will be forced to make a major decision with their star left-hander: to keep him until the last possible moment like they did with Upton or to trade him for a massive reward like they elected to do with James Shields.

In a video for Fox Sports, Ken Rosenthal talked about when the Rays will trade David Price. He said that in the “unlikely event” that the Rays will fall out of contention by the trade deadline, Price will likely be dealt then, but otherwise he will likely be traded following the season. Rosenthal’s more interesting comment, though, was that the Rays could keep Price without too much of a problem in 2014 thanks to the extra $27MM in TV revenue that will be coming to the Rays that year through the new national TV detail. However, Rosenthal warns, that would lower his trade value significantly as he would be much closer to free agency. But how much does that really matter? David Price is one of the best pitchers in baseball and the Rays having him on their team for an additional year or two could make all the difference.

For years now, the Rays have been juggling contending now and building for the future. As they do that, the big thing for them is their players’ value- how much they mean to the team versus how much they could net in a trade. When a player’s trade value is greater than what he gives the team, that’s when they trade him. Price’s value to the team is so incredibly high because he is such a talented pitcher, and the Rays are going to be hard-pressed to get fair value or more in a trade. You could make the argument that the Rays have plenty of pitching depth, with Matt Moore, Jeremy Hellickson, and Alex Cobb being talented young pitchers the Rays have at the big league level right now and players like Chris Archer, Jake Odorizzi, Alex Colome, and Taylor Guerrieri coming up, so the value Price gives the Rays on the mound isn’t nearly what he could give them if a trade for him acquires the type of prolific hitter the Rays have been missing in their lineup for years. But even then, that hitter would have to be something special, like we saw the Rays do when they acquired Wil Myers in exchange James Shields. Anything less than that caliber of prospect and the Rays might improve their offense, but probably not enough to counteract the loss of Price.

In a mailbag for the Texas Rangers’ official website, MLB.com’s T.R. Sullivan stated that if the Rangers could trade top prospect Jurickson Profar and more for a player like David Price or Giancarlo Stanton from the Marlins, they would do so without a moment’s hesitation. For a David Price trade to happen, Sullivan better be right and his logic better hold true for not only the Rangers but also other teams holding one of the top position player prospects in baseball, such as the Cardinals with Oscar Taveras. But even that would not be enough- the Rays would have to be confident enough in their remaining rotation options to be willing to trade Price away. If Moore, Hellickson, and Cobb emerge as pitchers who can be the top 3 in an excellent major league rotation, then it becomes much easier for the Rays to deal Price. Even as the Rays were able to get Myers for Shields, they only did the trade because they believed their rotation was good enough to compensate for the loss of Shields without missing a beat.

For the Rays to trade away David Price, they will have to receive a trade offer that blows them away by featuring one of the top prospects in baseball- but that’s not the only factor. If the Rays aren’t certain that their starting rotation will be good enough for them to continue to contending even as Price departs, it will be an easy decision for them to refrain from trading him and reevaluate their position in another year. It seems crazy that the Rays would possibly consider holding onto Price as he gets increasingly expensive, making his eventual exit from Tampa Bay an inevitability. But the Rays aren’t trading Price as a selling team knowing they can’t contend and hoping to trade their stars and acquire prospects that will change their outcome for the future. They’re only trading Price if they believe that their team reaches a point where it can remain formidable without him. Otherwise, as they have shown in the past, they will be more than content to keep their ace lefty Price right at the top of the top of their rotation for one more year and maybe more knowing just how much he gives them season after season. And if that happens, maybe they decide that the right moment for them to trade Price will never arrive.