BOSTON -- David Price has never won a postseason start. That will be the main Game 2 storyline just as it has been the main David Price storyline during the lefty's entire Red Sox career.

He knows it.

The Red Sox and Yankees open their best-of-five ALDS on Friday at Fenway Park. Chris Sale will start Game 1. Price will start Game 2 on Saturday. The Yankees have yet to announce their starting pitchers.

Price is looking forward to Saturday.

"The atmosphere in Fenway for 81 games, a lot of people would probably say that's a playoff atmosphere," Price told MassLive.com this week. "So I expect our atmosphere to be very good for our playoff games. But I feel like the atmosphere is always good. I don't think it's going to change a whole lot. I'm sure people are going to be pumped up for sure."

Price answered questions about his postseason failures during October 2015 when he pitched for the Blue Jays. He answered questions about it during his introductory press conference at Fenway Park two months later.

"I think I was just saving all my postseason wins for the Red Sox," Price said in December 2015.

The $217 million pitcher is 0-8 with a 5.74 ERA (37 earned runs, 58 innings) in nine postseason starts. He also has pitched dreadfully against the Yankees since arriving in Boston. He has gone 2-7 with a 7.71 ERA (50 earned runs, 58.1 innings) in eight starts vs. the Yankees as a member of the Red Sox. He has allowed 82 hits, including 16 homers.

Saturday doesn't seem like the ideal day he'll finally get the monkey off his back, right?

But certain statistics indicate he finally will overcome his postseason woes and break through with a win -- or at least put the Red Sox in a position to win. Pitchers obviously don't have total control of victories. Mets' Jacob deGrom, the 2018 NL Cy Young favorite, went 10-9 this season.

He might continue his winless trend. But there's no reason to believe he can't break through with his first dominant postseason.

The Five Relevant Stats:

1). 2.98 ERA

Price is 9-2 with a 2.98 ERA at Fenway Park this season compared to 7-5 with a 4.31 ERA in 14 starts on the road.

The lefty always has pitched well at Fenway Park except for his first season in Boston (2016). He went 6-1 with a 1.95 ERA and 0.95 WHIP in 11 career starts (74 innings) at Fenway as a visiting pitcher.

Why is he so comfortable here?

"The backdrop," Price said. "Just the perception when you're standing on the mound. It doesn't feel like 60-feet, 6-inches. I feel like it feels a little closer. And that's probably with the nearness of the backdrop, just that visual perception that it gives you when you're standing on the mound, I guess."

Price has a 4.95 ERA (20 innings, 11 earned runs) at Fenway vs. the Yankees the past three years. Not ideal, but he allowed two runs in 6-plus innings against New York at Fenway on Aug. 5. Both runs came in the seventh. He also tossed 8 scoreless innings against New York here July 16, 2017.

2). Three of the 16 homers have come at Fenway

Of the 16 homers Price has allowed to the Yankees, only three have come at Fenway. The other 13 were hit at Yankee Stadium.

Price gave up three homers at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 19. All three were the definitions of Yankee Stadium home runs.

Miguel Andujar hit a 340-foot homer with a 13 percent hit probability.

Luke Voit hit a 343-foot homer with an 18 percent hit probability. Voit hit another blast 341 feet with a 24 percent hit probability.

Fenway Park has a deep right field of 380 feet.

Price has allowed a surprising number of home runs during the postseason. He has given up 11 in his nine starts. Sixteen of the 38 earned runs (42 percent) he has allowed have scored on home runs.

The most important thing for all Red Sox pitchers during this ALDS is limiting home runs. Price has a better chance of doing it with the large right field at Fenway.

3). 18 straight outs

Price hasn't pitched as poorly in the playoffs as his stats show. He has hurled 6.2 or more innings in seven of his nine postseason starts.

"I haven't thrown the ball as bad as it looks and as bad as it gets talked about," Price told MassLive.com in September. "I'm very aware of that. But I haven't won. So maybe this year I'll go out, go five and give up five runs and leave with the lead and win."

He retired 18 straight batters Oct. 17, 2015, in Game 2 of the ALCS at Kansas City.

The lefty, then a member of the Blue Jays, gave up a leadoff single to Alcides Escobar in the bottom of the first inning before retiring the next 18 straight.

He should have won his first playoff start -- then a strange seventh inning happened.

The Royals scored five runs on four singles and one double in seventh. Three of the hits were softly struck. Ben Zobrist's 86.2 mph pop-up dropped into right field. Second baseman Ryan Goins called for it, but it landed between him and Jose Bautista.

Check out the link below. Price has pitched well enough to earn three wins. He also earned a victory in an elimination Game 163 in Texas in 2013.

There's absolutely no reason to believe he can't win a postseason start even against the Yankees.

4). 86

Per Tom Verducci of SI.com, "Eighty-six pitchers have started at least nine postseason games. Only one of them never has won a game: Price."

At this point, the numbers are heavily in his favor. Price is way too talented of a pitcher not to finally break through with a win, right?

5). 10 runs in the seventh

The seventh inning is the frame Price has allowed the most runs (10) during the playoffs.

Red Sox manager Alex Cora should be the right man to manage Price in the postseason. Cora has a pulse on every relevant advanced statistic. He has showed it all season. He should know the right time to pull Price.

The issue with Price is he usually does have one inning during a postseason start where he gives up a crooked number. It's not always late.

But Cora should know when to pull him if it is getting late and that big inning hasn't happened yet.

Cora served as Houston bench coach during the Astros' World Series run last year. The postseason nowadays is about pulling starters earlier rather than later and he saw it first-hand.

But Cora indicated earlier this season maybe some pitchers were pulled too early at times.

It's a balance between pulling them too early and keeping them in too long.

"There's a lot of information about that and where the stuff goes down," Cora said. "People get caught up on facing the lineup the third time around. I do believe it's more about the individual and the stuff.

"The last few days I've been reading a lot about our team. I knew them two weeks. But I know more about them, especially the pitching staff. So that information is going to help us out. Not to script it. It's not this guy, 50 pitches, he's coming out. It's not a script. But you're more familiar with their bodies, with their velocities, with everything that goes on on a nightly basis on the mound. And we can make decisions based on that."