Pass LaRoche to the Nationals
The Nationals found their Adam Dunn replacement today, reportedly agreeing to a two-year deal with journeyman Adam LaRoche. Only 31, this will be his fifth team – so another new team for LaRoche and another Adam at first will make this transition seamless for both sides, right?
Er, not quite. Dunn had a lifetime ISO of .271 and a 16.3% career walk rate while LaRoche comes in at .216 and 9.2% in those two categories. That’s a lot of lost offense. It can be as obvious as looking at Dunn’s constant home run totals around 40, while LaRoche’s hover around 25. Old-school stats actually work in this case.
LaRoche has been passed around so often because, well, he’s so average. Since 2008, qualified first basemen have averaged a .219 ISO – LaRoche had a .216 ISO over that same time period. The same group of first basemen had a collective 21% strikeout rate. LaRoche has a 25% career strikeout rate. They walked 11.5% of the time, LaRoche 9.5% of the time. They averaged 25.9 home runs per season, LaRoche has hit exactly 25 in each of the last three seasons. LaRoche has had a 116 wRC+ over the last three years, which looks okay until you see that the average first baseman has had a 130 wRC+. In fact, since each part of the package is so close to average or just below, he hasn’t even been an average first baseman.
At 31, this isn’t likely to change, especially given LaRoche’s move from Arizona to Washington. Washington’s park has a 94 park factor for home runs by lefties, and a 108 factor for doubles. That seems fine, except that LaRoche played in a park that showed a 114 home run park factor and a 115 doubles factor for lefties last year… and showed the third-worst ISO of his career along with the second-worst batting average. The boost barely showed.
Doesn’t matter, we can pencil him in for a .270ish batting average and 25 home runs, right? After all, that describes most of his seasons despite the different home ballparks. Well, maybe, but the Nationals’ park will have the worst park factor for lefty home runs of all the parks he called home. 20 home runs is just as much a possibility as 25. If he pairs last seasons’ career-worst strikeout rate (30.7%) with a BABIP more in line with his career number (.330 last year, .315 career), he may have another year with a .260 batting average – or worse.
Now you’re looking at a possible .260/20 HR guy. In a recent set of projections, I had LaRoche around 30th, but that was before he signed with a team that could afford him regular at-bats, so the projection only had 416 at-bats. With 500+ at-bats, he could ‘zoom’ up the charts… to about 27th or so. Would you rather have LaRoche, or take a chance on someone like Brandon Allen or Matt LaPorta? Or, if you like veterans, LaRoche or Garret Jones or Luke Scott?
Looks like LaRoche is almost toast, in fantasy terms.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
And look at LaRoche’s career splits @ Nationals Park:
14 G (51 AB): .314/.397/.608, 3 HR, 10 RBI, 6 2B, 9 runs scored, 7 BB, 15 K
Small sample, yes, but I’ll take it if we’re going to play the stats game. He fills a need to make them more competitive; that’s the bottom line. Now if only they could acquire a starting pitcher!
Only problem with that is how bad a lot of the Nats pitchers have been during the time period Nats Park has been open.
The opening premise of your article is wrong. The Nationals didn’t sign Laroche to replace Dunn in the lineup. The combination of signing Laroche and Jayson Werth is meant to replace Dunn/Willingham. If you had gone about your article’s opening that way it would be more accurate. While Laroche was signed to play the position Dunn played he isn’t actually replacing Dunn.
eh, he’s replacing him at the position and then in the next graph I pretty much lay out that he’s not replacing Dunn in the offense. Never really said he’s replacing Dunn’s offense, and it’s sort of a joke.
Sorry about that, I missed the joke part. The first 2 paragraphs though lead the reader to believe you are comparing the two directly since it starts out saying the Nationals found their Adam Dunn replacement today, and then compare their career ISO and BB rate.
… which weren’t comparable at all.
I hear you though. I figured the title of the post and the fact that this is a fantasy blog would put people on to the fact that LaRoche is the focus of the article. A flawed intro, you are correct.
Plowdy: Except the part about even the title of the article being a play on words – a form a humor. And a pretty solid effort at that.
I didn’t realize this was the fantasy blog until after my second post. I clicked a twitter link and ended up on here and completely missed that fact. It makes far more sense now.
So, to figure out how the team will look as a whole, Werth is slightly worse offensively than Dunn from what I’ve read (129 career wRC vs 135), and LaRoche is certainly an upgrade over Willingham from last year.
So this should give a slight bump or neutral for the rest of the Nats lineup?
Laroche is certainly a downgrade from Willingham, not an upgrade.
Absolutely not, Hammer was the streakiest of streaky.
With cold streaks far outlasting hot streaks.
But LaRoche always provides sick second-half numbers, so I’ll wait ’til July to scoop him up, thank you very much.
Agree the Werth/LaRoche combo is a modest offensive downgrade from Dunn/Willingham. However, defensively it is significantly better. You win with pitching and defense. Werth is far superior to Willingham with regard to range and arm. LaRoche will show better range than Dunn as well as save throwing Es from the other infielders. The Nats pitching got better with Dunn and Willingham off the field and they are better with Werth & LaRoche.
What about a full year of Danny Epsinosa and Ian Desmond? How does that affect their team offensively?
Full disclosure. Zero research and very little knowledge of the Nationals went into this question.
Um…have you seen Desmond’s defense, ugh.
Can’t get much worse; hopefully he got/is getting some ‘helping hands’ in the off-season.
Methinks his fielding coach (Pat Listach, I believe) has his hand full, pardon the pun.
It seems as though the article starts with the conclusion that LaRoche is a bad choice, and then works backwards from there.
Seems to me that LaRoche is a fine short-term option at 1B, which is how teams use him. He’s consistent, so you know what you’re getting, and you generally get your money’s worth. Seems like a fit for what the Nats are trying to do.
You can have Brandon Allen’s 40% K-rate and lesser ISO all you want. I wouldn’t even bring him up in the conversation. Matt LaPorta? He hasn’t had an ISO anywhere close to LaRoche’s (using the metrics in your article). Let’s look at each using an advanced metric that incorporates various stats …
Lets look at wOBA
——————–
Allen: .309
LaPorta: .308
LaRoche: .351
Jones: .337
Scott: .365
These are career numbers, but for some that’s basically all we have b/c they’re young, and the others are consistent as pros. I think you could make a case for Scott,but not the others, in regards to being superior to LaRoche.
By using wOBA, I am just staying consistent with the approach I interpret FG to use.
well, this is is the fantasy portion of your FanGraphs coverage, so we skew towards projecting traditional stats and collecting upside. So here are some rough projections I’m currently using for these players:
Allen .256, 25, 76
LaPorta .258, 23, 73
LaRoche .264, 21, 75
Garrett Jones, .262, 22, 81
Luke Scott .269, 24, 75
So, yeah, I take the young guys over the old guys just there’s a chance we haven’t seen their best yet, and I probably would take both veterans over LaRoche.. well maybe not Jones.
Yeah, I completely missed that. My bad.
The projections make your point very clear.
Pass LaRoche.
I see what you did there Eno. Way to appease the stoner/math crowd.
We…eh…I mean they…appreciate it I’m sure.
Except the fact that it has to be a tiny group.
Most stoners suck at math and most who are good at math aren’t stoners.
Stoners do like fantasy baseball however, which is why a combo of a big bag and abstinance is one of the best draft day investments you can make!