Here’s the return:

http://fullcount.weei.com/sports/boston/baseball/red-sox/2009/07/22/report-red-sox-acquire-adam-laroche/

But it looks like J. Wilson is on the bench, too. Not sure why that would be, but there’s been ongoing interest in him.

Basically, the Pirates dealt the contract for some chaff, and the Red Sox get someone who can keep the 1B glove away from Mark Kotsay and Jeff Bailey. That’s useful for the stretch, I guess.

LaRoche keeps the glove off of Kotsay, which wasn’t the problem in the first place.  Kotsay was far from a butcher at first, but he gives nothing with the bat anymore.  So a lefty with pop makes some sense.

It doesn’t take Bailey’s glove off the field, it keeps Bailey’s butt in Pawtucket when he comes off of the DL.

This is like getting the NL equivalent of Aubrey Huff, and he’s hitting better than Huff has, so its a little less vomit-inducing.  It still does nothing substantial, and if anything it proves that V-Mart isn’t coming and neither is Gonzales.  Somehow, someway, the roster Theo created has to start hitting again.

And someday the &%$#% have to lose again.

Thanks for almost making me laugh.

Neyer stated that LaRoche isn’t a good player.  Is he that much worse than Nick Swisher, who Neyer seems to like?  Career OPS+ for LaRaoche is 113, for Swisher it’s 112.  I see that Swisher gets on base more, are their defensive stats all that different?  Similar age.  Is it just the OBP?  Help me out here.

Nick Swisher can play the OF, and LaRoche is a platoon 1B. That alone makes their value substantially different.

LaRoche averaged 145 games a season the last four years.  Obviously not a platoon player.

I understand that but the question was, why would Neyer say LaRoche isn’t very good yet think so highly of Swisher when they have virtually equal OPS+ and the claim was made that Swisher is more valuable with the same OPS+ because he plays more than a platoon first baseman.  Fact is that Swisher and LaRoche have logged similar numbers of games per year.