McAdam: David Price checks off another box in beating the Yankees

On Sunday night, David Price finally settled all family business.

Well, not family, actually. More like "personal.''

Since last October, Price has been on one long redemption tour.

Remember, that he had never won a postseason start at the beginning of the playoffs. Following a rough start in the American League Division Series against the Yankees, he beat the Houston Astros in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series at Minute Maid Park to clinch the A.L. pennant for the Sox.

After that game, Price seemed like someone who had been given an 11th-hour reprieve from the governor, such was the relief on his face. Price seemed to intuitively understand, minutes after the win, that he had managed to change the narrative of his career. No more would he be dogged by questions about his inability to win when the games counted most.

That deep sigh you see Price take on the mound between pitches. Multiply that times about a hundred and that's how Price felt that night in Houston.

But he wasn't close to being done in October. He started and won Game 2 of the World Series against the Dodgers and won again. Then, with the Sox on the precipice of winning the title, he got the call -- on short rest -- for Game 5 and was again magnificent, allowing a single run over seven innings.

As Price drenched himself in champagne, it seemed like the idea of him being a postseason flop was years old already. Price had won a World Series and forever changes how people view him.

There was, however, one more thing on his "to do'' list -- beat the Yankees, in Yankee Stadium, as a member of the Red Sox.

To say he hadn't yet done that would be a gross understatement. Price had regularly been handed his lunch in the Bronx. In six starts since joining the Red Sox, he was 0-6 with a 9.79 ERA. One start, on July 1 on Sunday Night Baseball, was particularly horrid, with Price rocked for eight runs on nine hits -- five of them homers -- in 3.1 innings.

So there was some business to take of Sunday when Price took the mound. Was there ever.

Price took care of that, too, limiting the Yanks to just two runs over 6.1 innings, pitching the Sox to an 8-5 victory. It snapped a four-game losing streak for the Sox and also marked the first time in five tries this season that they managed to defeat the Yankees.

And David Price was the winning pitcher. Imagine that.

"He was great,'' gushed Alex Cora to reporters after the game. "Happy for him that he came in here and pitched the way he did.''

Price took control of the game from the beginning. Matched against a team that had the second most prolific offense in the league and one that had won seven of its last nine, Price carved up the Yankee lineup with ease in the early going, retiring them in order in each of the first three innings.

He got the first out of the fourth, too, before the Yankees managed their first hit -- a solo homer by Luke Voit. Three more singles -- none terribly hard-hit -- and a sacrifice fly produced another run, and the Yankees had runners at the corners with two outs when they ran themselves out of the inning with a delayed double steal attempt.

After that Price went back to attacking the New York lineup with a mixture of mostly cutters and changeups, located well enough to keep the Yanks off balance. He was deft enough to get 19 swings and misses from a dangerous New York offense. Two ground ball singles -- and a pitch count of 99 -- finally brought an end to his night in the seventh.

By then, the game was well in hand.

This weekend series seemed to be a referendum on which team fared better with its pitching plan -- the Yankees, with their fully-stocked bullpen, or the Red Sox with their more old-school reliance on their starting rotation.

Through the first two games, that seemed an easy call, and not just because the Red Sox lost both games. The losses also featured 9.1 innings of scoreless relief for the Yankee bullpen. Meanwhile, neither Chris Sale (four runs over six innings) nor Rick Porcello (five runs in 4.1 innings) were good enough.

Price, as it turned out, was plenty good. He's been their most consistent starter. Toss out last weekend's abbreviated start in Houston when Price was forced from the game with the flu, and he's pitched at least six innings in eight of his other 10 starts. In the other two, when Price only pitched five, he limited the opposition to two earned runs both times and the Sox won both games.

The Red Sox needed a win Sunday night. David Price got it for them.

That's one more box checked, one last victory lap on the redemption tour.