Price will skip Saturday start due to sore shoulder
Rookie Archer recalled from Triple-A to take mound against Rangers
Rays left-hander David Price won't make his scheduled start Saturday against the Rangers due to general soreness in his left shoulder.
Price felt unusually sore after his start Sunday in Toronto, so Tampa Bay decided it was best to skip the southpaw's turn in the rotation and plug in right-hander Chris Archer in Price's place against Texas.
"It's obviously something that we monitor closely," Rays executive vice president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. "It's not a big situation right now. It's not a big deal, and it's something that we wanted to be aggressive to get in front of to make sure that it wouldn't become a bigger deal.
Price, who is 17-5 with a 2.54 ERA, visited Dr. Koco Eaton for tests and will continue to be evaluated every day. Friedman reiterated that Price is expected to miss only one start and should slot back into the rotation at some point during next weekend's series against the Yankees in New York.
"There's a lot of mileage that these guys put on their bodies throughout the course of a year," Friedman said. "It's one of those things that happens fairly frequently throughout the course of a season, and it's really us being cautious and backing it up, missing a turn, and hopefully putting [Price] in a position to finish strong."
Archer, who was recalled to join the Rays on Friday, has gone 0-2 in two Major League starts despite a 3.86 ERA and 14 strikeouts in 11 2/3 innings. He pitched most of the season for Triple-A Durham, putting together a 3.66 ERA with 139 strikeouts in 128 innings, and was originally expected to be used this month with the Rays in an effort to limit the number of innings thrown by young right-hander Alex Cobb.
"There were a lot of different scenarios depending on what we did with different pitchers and how things shook out," Friedman said. "[Archer] wanted to get up here and help us as quickly as possible.
"From that standpoint, [Archer] was excited -- obviously not with why, but he's ready to go, and he's someone that we have a lot of confidence in."