Andy LaRoche: Better Than The Raw Numbers Indicate.

Nate Rose — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:53:24 -0000

OK, so this is a repost from my comment on the fanpost about Andy LaRoche going berserk. I'm opening up a Pirates-exclusive blog of my own pretty soon, and fleshing out this idea is going to be one of my first posts. I'll be sure to write a Fanshot here when that's operational. But for now, here's the raw basis of this idea.

This season, Andy LaRoche has been a legitimate masher of left-handed pitching, going .291/.371/.504 against lefties, with exactly half of his HR. It's only 143 PAs this year, so it's way too small of a sample to be declaring him a platoon player yet, but if the trend continues at least we know he has some legitimate value as a lefty masher.

One other thing I've noticed is that his BABIP against lefites is .314, much closer to his overall xBABIP of .317 using the Simple xBABIP Calculator tool than his .267 BABIP against righties or his .280 BABIP overall. If FanGraphs had batted ball platoon splits available, I'd be interested to see if he's just hitting more line drives or whatnot against lefties than against righties, or if it's pure dumb luck.

Either way, a .317 xBABIP for LaRoche is encouraging in that he's been getting unlucky to the tune of .037 points of BA. If all of those should've-been-hits had fallen, he'd be batting .288 right now. No telling what his SLG would be, and while I could figure out what his OBP would be it would take more work than I'd be willing to do.

Bottom line is, Andy LaRoche is better than his raw numbers indicate. It's frustrating to watch him, but I'd say that the LaRoche we've seen this month and in May are closer to the real Andy LaRoche. Maybe I'm wrong and his numbers are just affected by outlier hot streaks, and he's actually a crappy player. But I don't think we should give up on him until we know that for sure.

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Andy LaRoche: Better Than The Raw Numbers Indicate.