Adam LaRoche Was One of the Best 29th Round Picks Ever

Adam LaRoche may or may not be retiring. It certainly seems as though he is, and it seems as though his decision was made abruptly. While that may not be 100 percent certain, now seems like a good time to look back on his career. On one hand, LaRoche was sort of a letdown, in that he never really took off the way it seemed like he might. On the other hand, LaRoche was a huge success, and should be celebrated as such.

LaRoche burst on the scene in 2004, right at the tail end of the Braves’ division championship run. He made the team out of spring training, though he didn’t start on opening day. That honor went to the ageless Julio Franco. He would miss the month of June, and that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. At the time he exited the lineup, he was hitting .242/.271/.383, with two homers in 134 plate appearances. From his return on July 2 through the end of the season, he hit .301/.371/.556, with 11 homers in 222 PA. Let’s call that a marked improvement.

He was solid during the 2004 postseason. His three-run homer in the sixth inning of Game Four of the National League Division Series tied the game against the Astros. Three innings later, the Braves would pull ahead and force a Game Five. They ultimately wouldn’t advance, but LaRoche had dealt a mighty blow.

Two years later, LaRoche had stroked 32 homers (which tied for 30th in the majors) and posted a .276 ISO, which was good for 14th in the majors. But just as quickly as we started wondering if LaRoche could keep remain at that plateau or perhaps even best it, the Braves had shipped him off to the Pirates in a four-player deal. It didn’t work out super well for the Braves. The players they received — Michael Gonzalez and Brent Lillibridge — only provided 1.4 WAR in Atlanta. LaRoche posted 3.5 WAR with the Pirates.

Having said that, it could have been a lot worse for the Pirates. It would be six more seasons before LaRoche would top 30 homers, and he never came anywhere near that .276 ISO again. In short, while the Braves didn’t get what they wanted for him, they never had much reason to regret the trade, especially because they called up Mark Teixeira the next season.

This set the stage for LaRoche to be bounced around a few more times. In 2009, he was traded to the Red Sox, but he was an odd fit there, given that the team had Kevin Youkilis ensconced at first base. When the team acquired Victor Martinez nine days later, it became even harder to figure out where LaRoche fit in, but people didn’t have to wait for long, as he was traded that same day to the Braves for Casey Kotchman, who fit the Sox better at the time because of his adept glovework.

Back in Atlanta, LaRoche once again went on a tear. For the month of August, his 189 wRC+ was fourth best in the majors. For the entire second half — not all of which he spent in Atlanta — his 138 wRC+ was 28th best in the majors. Atlanta just agreed with LaRoche, so it seemed. Surely Atlanta, who would be in need of a first baseman in 2010, would re-sign LaRoche in free agency, yes? Well, no. They signed Troy Glaus instead, who would go on to be a replacement level player in his final major league season. Eight days later, LaRoche would sign with the Diamondbacks.

In his year in the desert, LaRoche hit well enough to earn a four-year deal with the Nationals, and he spent four years there before signing with the White Sox prior to the 2015 season. His first year with both the Nationals and the White Sox were a bit of a disaster, but in between he was a perfectly serviceable player. In 2012 in particular, he put up his career-best season by WAR (3.6), as he was above average with the bat and the glove. He was also nearly a scratch runner, which was pretty rare for him — since he entered the league in 2004, there have only been 25 players who have tallied a worse BsR than LaRoche has.

All told, LaRoche has only tallied 11.3 WAR for his career. That’s not that much, in the grand scheme of things. Mike Trout gets to that mark every eight months or so. But LaRoche wasn’t a first-round pick like Trout was — he was a 29th round pick. As you can imagine, 29th round picks don’t make it to the majors all that often. Certainly they don’t these days, with the new (and horrible, in my opinion) draft rules. But back in the day, we had the draft and follow, where teams could draft players, and then had the right to follow them for most of the next year before deciding whether to sign them or not. That practice helped build up the database of 29th rounders who made the majors.

LaRoche wasn’t one of them though. He was drafted by the Braves on June 5, 2000, and he signed on June 21st. Curiously, it was the third time that LaRoche had been drafted. He had gone in the 18th round in 1998 and the 42nd round in 1999, but hadn’t signed either time. As such, he is now one of the members of this select list:

29th Round Draft Picks Who Reached the Majors

Player	Year	Team	G	WAR
Ken Griffey	1969	Cincinnati	2,097	32.1
John Denny	1970	St. Louis	325	27.9
Kyle Lohse	1996	Chicago (NL)	455	26.7
Adam LaRoche	2000	Atlanta	1,605	11.3
Nick Blackburn	2001	Minnesota	145	4.0
Mike Venafro	1995	Texas	307	2.3
Kevin Foster	1987	Montreal	100	2.1
Erik Kratz	2002	Toronto	192	1.9
Mike Koplove	1998	Arizona	222	1.8
Lou Pote	1990	San Francisco	129	1.3
Dave Tomlin	1967	Cincinnati	409	1.2
Gene Walter	1982	San Diego	128	1.1
Kason Gabbard	2000	Boston	34	1.0
Mark Leonard	1986	San Francisco	168	1.0
Steve Delabar	2003	San Diego	183	0.7
Tim Spooneybarger	1998	Atlanta	88	0.7
Jack Fimple	1980	Cleveland	92	0.6
Brad Kilby	2005	Oakland	16	0.4
Ron Flores	2000	Oakland	53	0.3
John Harris	1976	California	56	0.3
Jonathan Van Every	2000	Cleveland	40	0.2
Gene Krug	1977	Chicago (NL)	7	0.1
Jim Farr	1978	Texas	5	0.1
Jeff Hamilton	1982	Los Angeles (NL)	416	0.1
Red Patterson	2010	Los Angeles (NL)	1	0.0
Michael Neu	1999	Cincinnati	33	0.0
Bobby Cuellar	1974	Texas	4	0.0
Russ Davis	1988	New York (AL)	612	0.0
Zak Shinall	1987	Los Angeles (NL)	1	-0.1
Kerry Woodson	1988	Seattle	8	-0.1
Paul Swingle	1989	California	9	-0.1
Jim Czajkowski	1986	Atlanta	5	-0.2
Tom Shearn	1996	Houston	7	-0.2
Kevin Pasley	1971	Los Angeles (NL)	55	-0.3
Sid Roberson	1992	Milwaukee	26	-0.4
Cliff Bartosh	1998	San Diego	53	-0.6

So, he wasn’t the best. But there’s certainly no shame in not being as good as Ken Griffey Sr. The main takeaway is just how impressive it is to have a substantial career when you’re drafted so late. For some of these players, the games played isn’t an adequate reflection of their time in the majors, since pitchers (and especially starting pitchers) necessarily play in fewer games than position players, but you get the idea. A lot of these players you probably have never heard of, or at best you did an “oh ya, I remember that name” kind of thing.

Getting to the majors is difficult. Staying there is even harder. These are both exponentially harder if you weren’t a bonus baby. Perhaps Adam LaRoche never took off and became the superstar he showed glimpses of being, but that isn’t necessarily the bar we should be judging players by. If this is the end of the line for him, he had a pretty sweet career.