WHITE SOX SIGN ADAM LAROCHE

The White Sox offseason continues to take shape as it was reported Friday night that the Sox had signed free agent Adam LaRoche. The White Sox are yet to officially announce the deal, but it was reported by Bob Nightingale that LaRoche received a two-year deal worth $25 million.

And that's fine.

Two years isn't going to hamstring the Sox, even if LaRoche is now the second-highest paid member of the team, sliding in behind John Danks.

As for what the signing means to the Sox next season, my initial reaction was a bit trepidatious. Maybe I'm just put off by the idea of signing a left-handed slugging first baseman from the Nationals considering what happened with Adam Dunn, but that's stupid. LaRoche isn't Adam Dunn. At least I hope he isn't.

What we know about LaRoche is that he's coming off a pretty good season with the Nationals. He hit .259/.362/.455 in 140 games with 26 home runs and 92 RBI. He was worth 2.2 WAR. That's not bad at all. What isn't great is that LaRoche just turned 35 a few weeks ago, so he's not exactly coming to Chicago in the middle of his prime.


There's a definite chance of regression here, but it's clear by this move that Rick Hahn is planning on fielding a contender next season. Plus, LaRoche has long been considered a good defender at first base, which would allow the White Sox to give Jose Abreu more time at designated hitter instead of first base, which would probably be a good thing. Abreu wasn't a terrible defensive first baseman last year, but just because he was better than the expectation doesn't mean he was good.

And considering all the minor injuries he dealt with throughout his rookie season, it'll be nice to give him more of a break as a DH.

But back to LaRoche....

There are some signs that he could actually improve as a hitter next season. When you look at his BABIP last year it was .277, which was below league average, and below his career average of .302. Now, in a vacuum, we could look at this and say that LaRoche is just getting older, he's losing bat speed, and he's just not the strong man he used to be. But what makes LaRoche's BABIP so odd is that his line drive rate was 31%.

That's the highest rate of his career in any single season. His career line drive rate is 22%.

This suggests that LaRoche had some shitty luck in 2014. He was hitting it hard right at 'em.

Now if he could put up a line of .259/.362/.455 with a lower than average BABIP while hitting a lot of line drives, there's a decent shot those numbers could improve even further in 2015 should his luck even out.

In other words, there's a chance LaRoche could play better than his salary next season and become a steal for the Sox, and another great move by Hahn. And if he doesn't, it's only a two-year deal. It's not something that's going to handcuff the Sox in this rebuild for any length of time.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is it's not the kind of move that's really going to move the needle one way or another, and it's not the kind of big splash so many fans crave, but it could prove to be very beneficial to this team next season.

I have a hard time getting too upset about that.