STARKVILLE — Spencer Price did not choose to be a closer at the beginning. The brutally honest truth is he wasn’t good enough to start on his high school team.
Mark Monaghan coached Price at DeSoto Central High School in Southaven and did so in an embarrassment of riches in 2015. His starting rotation featured Keegan James, currently alongside Price on Mississippi State’s roster; Austin Riley, at the time a soon-to-be 41st pick in the Major League Baseball draft now in the Atlanta Braves organization; and Dallas Woolfolk, Ole Miss’ closer with six saves this season.
Still, Monaghan saw enough ability in Price to know he had to find a way to pitch him and had him try closing; he was introducing Price to his calling.
Price fell in love with the closer role at DeSoto Central and quickly picked up the role in his one year at Meridian Community College. MSU coach Andy Cannizaro said he has commanded the same role for the Bulldogs; his two saves last weekend in the sweep of Tennessee pushed his season total to six. MSU may ask for more of the same in the three-game series at Ole Miss scheduled to begin today (7 p.m., ESPNU).
“He’s a guy that’s makeup and grit with that slider, 90 miles an hour with the slider,” Cannizaro said. “He throws every single pitch with conviction, with a purpose and he’s been doing a great job for us.”
Monaghan was consistently amazed at Price’s dedication to his team-first mentality: Monaghan plus Price at first base, catcher and third base in his high school career in addition to stints on the mound. Monaghan said all Price ever said was, “What di you need me to do?”
Price maintains that attitude at MSU, but admits to his love for the closer role.
“There’s nothing like throwing in the ninth inning: adrenaline’s pumping, you get some blood pumping when you go out there, it’s quick, short outings, you can pitch multiple times per weekend,” Price said. “There’s nothing like it and I love it.”
With a few years of it in his background now, he has taken to enjoying some of the finer nuances of closing, such as intense scouting both before and during games.
“I love to watch the other team: watch video, take good time into preparing for them, knowing who likes what,” he said. “(MSU pitching coach Gary) Henderson’s great at what he does, calling pitches and locations, and I trust him. I go with what he says.”
Price’s loyalty to Henderson’s pitch calling is another example of his selfless attitude, as he had no pitch caller to respond to in high school.
Monaghan said his pitching coach called the pitches for everyone on the staff: even James, Riley and Woolfolk starting ahead of him. But when Price took the mound to finish games, the clipboard went away. DeSoto Central trusted Price’s advanced baseball intellect to make the right calls.
Monaghan added Price had the awareness to pitch backwards at times, meaning starting at-bats with a breaking ball as opposed to a traditional fastball. For Price, that first-pitch breaking ball — often thrown for a strike — was his slider, born and bred out of necessity more than anything else.
At DeSoto Central, part of what kept Price out of the starting rotation was velocity: James, Riley and Woolfolk had developed more in that regard than Price had at the time, so Price had to get his outs in other ways. That almost always meant the slider that has now caught Cannizaro’s attention.
Even without the velocity to attract himself a bigger role and more attention from bigger colleges, Price still approached closing with a, “fearless,” demeanor, Monaghan said.
To this day, when Price enters a game, he tells himself he only has a one-run lead to work with, even when his room for error is much larger than that, as it was in last Sunday’s save against Tennessee.
“You could see he had that it factor you have to have as a closer,” Monaghan said. “It wasn’t far into his senior year that we knew he was going to be our guy we gave the ball to in the sixth and seventh.”
Even in the hectic 2017 that has been for Cannizaro and his bullpen, he could say the same for Price.
Follow Dispatch sports writer Brett Hudson on Twitter @Brett_Hudson.
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