David Price shocks the world.

Uh, here is news:

I can’t figure out if Topkin’s making a little joke about how boring camp has been this spring. Probably, since with the exile of James Shields, the Rays really didn’t have any other candidate at all. Oh, and also Price won one of these little trophies last year.

How good is Price, really? I’m not convinced he’s the best pitcher in the American League. I think just about anybody would choose Justin Verlander for that title. But Price is really good, and the nice thing about evaluating him is that his underlying skills have seemed almost identical in each of the last two seasons. His walks were the same, his strikeouts were the same, and only a few home runs and some luck kept his ERA from being the same in both seasons.

And looking at the last couple of seasons, I’m perfectly comfortable with this ranking:

1. Justin Verlander
2. CC Sabathia
3. Clayton Kershaw
4. Felix Hernandez
5. David Price

With Cliff Lee and Stephen Strasburg having decent cases for that fifth slot, probably.