Andy LaRoche Is Benched Already

This year was supposed to be different for Andy LaRoche. After a nightmare 2008 in which he began the season as the Dodgers third baseman of the future and ended it with a .458 OPS in 49 games after being banished to Pittsburgh, he worked with Pirates hitting coach Don Long over the winter to try and reclaim his status as one of the most promising young third baseman in the game.

For a while, it seemed to be working. In spring training, he hit.333/.453/.471 with a pair of homers. Spring training stats are rarely predictive, but for a guy that seemed completely clueless at the plate last fall, it was the exact sort of camp that Pirate fans had hoped for. His swing looked good, his injured thumb seemed to be healed and it was looking like maybe this year would be different.

And who knows, maybe this year will be different for LaRoche. But in two games, he's 0-for-6 and he's only reached base once. On top of that, he's already made three errors in two games at third base and those errors have lead to three runs for the Cardinals.

As a result, he's finding himself on the bench tonight just two games in to the season.

Manager John Russell says this isn't a long-term thing and he's just giving LaRoche a night to pull himself together. That's certainly the right approach here, but it's pretty striking how similar LaRoche has looked in these first two games to the way he looked when he flailed in his Pirate debut last year. Two games isn't enough to make any kind of judgment, but the younger LaRoche brother certainly isn't doing anything to inspire hope in the Pirates or their fans so far in this very young season.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

4-11-2009 @ 5:47PM

Xzavier said...

Ugh. The Jason Bay trade was the stupidest trade in Pirates history. They can't get Andy LaRoche to hit anything. They can't get Craig Hansen to find the strike zone and they can't keep Bryan Morris healthy. Brandon Moss isn't Jason Bay, therefore this trade is a complete bust and grounds for firing Neil Huntington. I just wonder why he felt it was necessary to trade away Jason Bay. What was the convoluted logic behind it? I think it was just an attempt to jam about $10 million more in the Pirates ownership pockets. I think they hate the fans of this team. The fact is that the Pirates are now further away from a winning season than they were with Bay and Nady on the team. I've also heard that Ned Colletti, the Dodgers Gm is a terrible GM. If that's true, if he didn't want Andy LaRoche than Andy must not have been very good to begin with. I also wonder if they did any scouting at all on the guy. Probably not. Just thought "Hey, it's Adams brother and Adam starts out all his seasons strong, right? So let's get rid of this Bay bum who actually demands a real pay check and bring in Andy LaRoche." Of course Neil isn't the one who will suffer long term for that trade, just like Dave Littlefield didn't suffer long term either. I hope Neal learned a lesson with this and realized that trading away all your best players doesn't work. It's better to keep what vets you can because they pay off is never gonna be as good as the guy you have on the team. Also, it's better to spend more money on the draft and try to mix the veterans and the draftees than have a team full of inexperienced prospects and major league busts.