Red Sox - Acquired Ad. LaRoche
Boston Red Sox - Acquired 1B Adam LaRoche from the Pittsburgh Pirates for SS Argenis Diaz and P Hunter Strickland
It’s hardly a haul for the Pirates, but I still don’t particularly like this move for the Red Sox. While he’s had big runs down the stretch the last few years, the difference between LaRoche as a role player and someone like Hinske over 2 months is just about nothing. If the team desperately needed a 1B, that would be another story, but I don’t see LaRoche, in the limited role of Mike Lowell’s handcuff (through Youkilis, obviously) as being much more useful than whatever Chris Carter the Red Sox have at the moment.
Diaz hasn’t hit yet, but he’s an excellent defensive shortstop, already ready to be a plus-contributor in the majors at short, at least with the glove. If the Pirates feel that Diaz can hit 330/330 in the majors in the next year or two, this might be a sign that they’re finally going to pull the trigger on Wilson. While Wilson’s been a bit of a headache for the team in the press, you also can’t completely blame the guy for being annoyed after being almost-traded over-and-over again for 3 years. I’m not sure Diaz will in fact get to 330/330 soon, if ever, but it’s worth a shot considering his glove.
Strickland’s more of a longshot. Average fastball, mediocre change, slurve that gets killed. Well-built pitcher (though could use a little more bulk) but 5.5 K/9 in the Sally League ain’t going to move you up the prospect ladder. The Bucs will keep an eye on Strickland, but they’re probably not going to expect too much of him.
2009 ZIPS Projection - Adam LaRoche
——————————————————————————————————————
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB BA OBP SLG
——————————————————————————————————————
Year-to-Date 324 46 80 25 1 12 40 41 81 2 .247 .329 .441
Rest-of-Year 220 31 59 18 1 10 36 27 52 1 .269 .348 .490
——————————————————————————————————————
Total 544 77 139 43 2 22 76 68 133 3 .256 .337 .461
2009 ZIPS Projection - Argenis Diaz
——————————————————————————————————————
AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB BA OBP SLG
——————————————————————————————————————
Year-to-Date 282 18 67 11 1 0 21 14 63 6 .238 .275 .284
Rest-of-Year 183 15 41 6 1 1 13 9 44 2 .223 .260 .276
——————————————————————————————————————
Year-to-date totals include minor-league translations, if applicable.
Dan Szymborski
Posted: July 22, 2009 at 05:21 PM |
57 comment(s)
Login to Bookmark
Related News:
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
1. The Marksist Posted: July 22, 2009 at 06:08 PM (#3263068)Not for a $7M first baseman in Fenway, where the average batting line this year is .274/.346/.443. That leaves LaRoche with a 111 OPS+, which is below average for a 1B. Not bad for a bench player, though.
Mike Lowell cannot run or field right now, and I see this move as based on a determination by the Red Sox that Lowell's hip has rendered him no longer a capable starter. Lowell can still hit, it seems, but he isn't going to hit enough to be useful player given how many runs he's giving away when he's not at the plate.
I would expect that LaRoche will be starting four games a week. Probably not a good thing for anyone's fantasy team.
Anyway, anything that gets Lowell off the field is an upgrade at this point. With his body in the condition that it is, he fields like a DH, sadly. If some extra rest can help him heal, then that's a bonus.
Mike Timlin worked out for the Rockies. The Denver Post article says he lives in Colorado, so I guess it may not be as much of a cry for help as it seems. He probably saw their pen on tv and thought, "I could do that" and drove out to the stadium.
Unless you also have Lowell.
A few things:
1) Szym didn't say much about LaRoche's 2nd half split, which is both very consistent over his career and so huge that if it continues, the Red Sox essentially just traded for Mark Teixeira.
2) Right now Diaz isn't worth much regardless of his ability to pick it. This is his second turn at AA and he's gotten worse with the bat. Even if he fielded like Ozzie Smith, hitting .330/.330 wouldn't play in Boston, even if he's able to hit that level offensively.
3) This move keeps Kotsay from playing, which is a good thing.
4) This move allows Lowell to be traded or DL'ed, if necessary.
Matt, I think you have it exactly right. LaRoche will at worst start four games a week. Much more than a role player. Certainly more playing time than Hinske has either gotten or is likely to get barring injury. And let's not forget that Lowell *is* hurt.
How can this be both things. Either it allows Lowell to be traded with LaRoche replacing his time/AB, etc. In which case you still need Kotsay just as much as you need him now to back up LaRoche. Or LaRoche replaces Kotsay as Lowell's backup for time/AB.
Presumably LaRoche will be more durable than Lowell. So while #3 and #4 aren't going to be simultaneously in effect, they will both be factors.
If a 660 OPS for a shortstop won't play in Boston, then why do Boston shortstops have a combined OPS of 649 this season? An OPS of 660 seems about par for the course for Boston shortstops in the Epstein Era.
Note that they keep trying to acquire SS. It's not like they've had the same guy in there for the last five years hitting .270/.320/.340 while saying "yeah, we're set at SS".
And no one in Boston is happy with those numbers. A 660 OPS isn't, in the modern AL, good enough to make you a regular on any team trying to win anything. If you're playing it's because there's an injury or because the team expects you to improve sooner rather than later.
Diaz's current MLE is closer to 450 than to 650, I expect. And if every young SS prospect lauded as having a great glove but no bat was a gold glover, there would be a lot more great glove utility infielders in the world. So Diaz isn't much more than a lottery ticket, though one with a reasonable chance of a "you won a cheap utility infielder for 2011 and 2012" appearing as you scratch it off.
The Pirates got $3M and a lineup spot to try out younger and/or cheaper players, plus two depth prospects. They weren't gonna get a lot more for a platoon first baseman, especially if they didn't want to pick up any salary. It seems like a perfectly fair trade to me.
521. He's fortunate to have hit zero HRs, lest the MLEs take them away.
Again, this doesn't mean Diaz is some great prospect no one should have given up. all I'm saying is: below average players are below average, not worthless.
He was one of the better acquisitions of Dave Littlefield, but a lefty 1B who doesn't slug .500 and doesn't exactly clobber RHPs either can only take you that far. I agree that Diaz is a gamble. Strickland continues the path of high K, low BB pitchers.
Where's his high K's?
It's probably also the best way to get bang for your buck. Probably no type of player is underrated more than teh all-glove SS. Adam Everett in Houston provided phenomenal value for his 2-3M/year, and he was worse than a 660 OPs.
That was my thought as well. Also Twinkie standards.
Sincere question.
I think the Hinske thing is a reasonable point, though. Hinske was much cheaper in cost and can fake corner OF. Why not get him?
Because LaRoche is only a little better as a hitter who is having a worse year, and is a poor defensive 1B exclusively, while Hinske appears to be an average corner outfielder and an average 1B, who can even play 3B in an emergency?
This exact statement was my first thought when I heard about this move this morning. And I'm a Red Sox fan.
Leaving aside Hinske - first DeRosa, now this. Seems Sabean may be totally asleep at the wheel.
Smith and I have similar systems for defensive estimations for minors (we both did it because Jeff Sackmann hadn't kept doing his estimator after 2007 season). For '07 and '08, Chone has him at 12 runs above average and I have him at 14.
1) The Red Sox are probably not done making roster moves quite yet - they'll have to make another move somewhere, likely either to DL Lowell (who make me wince watching him move on the field right now), or to DFA Kotsay. I'm betting that they are getting ready to shut down Lowell for a while. They may also look to trade some of their relief depth (it would likely be Saito), and use the roster spot for LaRoche or something. While some might question the impact of going from 7 relievers to 6 relievers, keep in mind that he's thrown 31.2 innings the entire season, and that he has literally thrown about 3.1 innings of meaningful baseball since the end of April. For that utter lack of usage, you might as well put a AAA guy like Hunter Jones or Fernando Cabrera in the slot, save the money, or try to get some organizational depth.
2) If the Pirates think they're getting anything of value for their other potential deadline deal players, they're not. LaRoche was probably their fourth most useful piece on the trade market this week (after Sanchez, Capps and Wilson), and they got nothing for him. Capps would bring little more, and it hard to see Wilson bringing more than one or two B prospects. Sanchez, a little more, but still, the days of finding the next Jeff Bagwell (or even the next Matt LaPorta) are long gone...
Maybe they thought Lowell might be able to come back? LaRoche projects for 5 points OBP and 40 points slugging for the rest of the year - thats, oh, maybe five runs more - subtract a couple for the glove and a couple for positional adjustment for when Hinske plays OF or stands at 3B, and, well, there's really no difference. I guess maybe the Red Sox figured they already had Kotsay and Lowell, so let's see if Lowell's hip improves enough or Kotsay pulls a Mabry before we move - and the Yankees swiped Hinske while they waited.
On the field, I think they are basically the same player, valuewise, with LaRoche having a smidge more upside because of his power bat.
A lot of this depends on whether we really believe first half/second half splits are anything other than statistical flukes. If it's for real with LaRoche, then this is obviously a great move.
A solid bet since his OPS in AA is only .620. His chances of ever OPS'ing .650 in the majors are near zero. He'll extremely likely never get more than a brief taste of the major leagues.
I wouldn't necessarily go that far. He's only 22 and was much better than that last year in AA. But to me he's no great shakes.
I'm surprised to see no one (other than me) mention LaRoche's 2nd half split. Are we assuming he's not going to go gangbusters on the league this year?
I think LaRoche could enjoy his usual 2nd half surge and still only hit .260/.330/.460, now that he's in the AL East, and no one will notice.
And watchout when Adam goes on a roll. He hits some monster shots so effortlessly.
The league difference will, I think, yes.
Adam LaRoche. The Red Sox probably believe there's something to it.
There is an article on BTF or maybe linked to in a post that says that only 3% of players can be shown to have a true first/second half split, and LaRoche is one of them.
Is Lowell in denial? When he went on the DL I assumed it would be for a while, but only a few days in Lowell was saying he could play right away. He comes back and everybody (even the writers, who love him) is saying he has no range and cannot run. I'm afraid Lowell's attitude over the past month hasn't been a "I can tough it out" one, but "I cannot admit how bad it is because it's scary" one.
I don't know that I'd count on it. He's been truly ghastly in July this year (.138/.167/.241), and that's usually his best month.
I think for baseball players and particularly aging ones, the line between these two is pretty blurry.
That's one hell of a league difference.
I also think Lowell knows that his range is kaput, so he is trying to get back on the field however possible, because the end of his career as a useful player might be coming.
Yes, but isn't that the biggest failure of Epstein's roster construction? Boston has put a new guy out there just about every year since 2004. Often the new guy has been worse than his predecessor.
To me his biggest decision-making failures have resulted from impatience. I'll count the Renteria trade as a failure, as well as the Bard/Meredith trade. He lost patience with Renteria after one season, and shouldn't have. He lost patience with Bard after a few weeks, and shouldn't have.
Diaz will play SS at Indy. Bixler is being turned into a utility player; he's seen a lot of time in CF recently.
I hate this trade for Pittsburgh; it gives them nothing that they don't already have in abundance.
-- MWE
EDIT: I'd have tried to get Weiland (who I gather is hurt at the moment) or Exposito, as long as Boston was taking the salary.
First, you can never show statistically that anything is "true." All you can ever show is that it's "unlikely." Second, if one uses the standard 95% confidence interval to determine "significantly unlikely", you would expect 5% of players (2.5% in either direction) to fall outside the confidence interval by pure chance.
Now if they used a 99% CI or a 6-sigma rule or something like that and found that 3% of players surpassed that threshhold ... then there's a 1 in something chance that LaRoche is someone with a true split.
And it's not clear what's been controlled for (e.g. by random chance, maybe LaRoche has faced more lefties in the first half or hit in crappier road parks or ...). And none of this answers whether the size of that "true" split is large enough to make any real difference.
Anyway, whether this is a good pickup for the Sox depends on how big you think the league differential is. LaRoche's raw stats are those of an average 1B and that's playing full-time not in a platoon. If he can maintain that in the AL, he's a very nice pickup for the Sox in my opinion. If instead he's a 100 OPS+ in the AL then this is pretty meh, but still a useful bench player for them and they gave up little talent and something like $2.5 M.
As to Hinske vs. LaRoche -- that's not as easy a comparison as I think many folks here make out. Hinske's been a part-timer with a heavy platoon split for the last 4 seasons, during which his performance has bounced around substantially. LaRoche's overall numbers include a good many more PA vs. LHP (though, of course, his days off are mainly against LHP so it's not a huge difference). And if you're going to believe in 1st/2nd half splits, you might as well believe in consistency too -- LaRoche has yet to have a bad season. Hinske has had 5 seasons as bad or worse than LaRoche's worst and LaRoche has 2 seasons better than Hinske's best (in OPS+ terms). LaRoche is the better hitter, Hinske gets the positional flexibility nod.
I wonder how much of that is due to the changes in Pirates clubhouse and Adam being pissed off with management. Sometimes players suck for reasons other than a lack of ability.
As of last Sunday the difference in the Sox and Pirates schedules was 7.6 wins, or 13.5 for the whole season. (The average league difference was 7.8 wins per 162 games, down a bit from last year when it was close to 10.) But divide that 13.5 wins by 8.5 regulars, 5 SP, a closer, the set up relievers, the bench and you're talking about an 8 or 9 run difference in the contribution of each player, or about 35 points of OPS for a hitter.
In the meantime, he's also moving from a 95 hitter's park to a 108, which is worth about 50 OPS points.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main