Pittsburgh Logging Company: Where is Andy LaRoche’s power?

One of the most disappointing aspects of the season for me has been Andy LaRoche’s complete lack of power. He is currently ranked 131st out of 160 qualified hitters in Isolated Power (ISO), right between Craig Counsell and Felipe Lopez. If the Pirates are going to turn the corner and become a competitive ballclub, they need to receive better offensive production from their starting position players.

One frequent argument is that LaRoche, who is in his first full major league season, is still young and that the power will develop as he ages. That is definitely possible, but it is anything but a given. It is one thing to assume that Andrew McCutchen (22 years old) or Jose Tabata (21 years old) will show more pop in the future. It is much different to say the same for LaRoche (25 years old). LaRoche is nearing what is generally a player’s prime age, and with each passing year, his chances of seeing a dramatic improvement in performance decrease.

I would like to focus this post on LaRoche’s minor league numbers, specifically looking for an indication that raw power was present. Clearly, he posted some very high slugging percentages in the Pacific Coast League. But that league is known to inflate offensive performance. So I decided to plug his raw numbers into the equivalency calculator at minorleaguesplits.com. The calculator helpfully adjusts for league and team. Thus, we can see how LaRoche would have performed had he been playing in Pittsburgh in a certain year. I only used his stats from Double-A and higher, since that is a better indicator of major league performance than performance at the lower levels. I also excluded the 22 Double-A at-bats LaRoche accumulated in 2008, due to the small sample size. I included LaRoche’s stats for this season in the bottom row. Focus on the major league equivalent ISO numbers.