Tuesday, August 28, 2007
By Dejan Kovacevic, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Peter Diana/Post-Gazette'
First baseman Adam LaRoche's second-half surge in both power and batting average has given the Pirates' offense a huge lift.
No matter how miserably his baseball life was going back in April and May, no matter how many boos he heard or how many third strikes zipped right by him, Adam LaRoche never dragged his bat home.
Not all the way, anyway.
The way he tells it, he would pause at the door, take a deep breath, squeeze out a smile and turn the knob.
"I'd never take it inside," the Pirates' first baseman was recalling the other day. "Even if I was really upset, if I really wanted to yell or scream or whatever, I'd leave it outside."
Trouble was ...
"My wife ... oh, man. I'd walk in there and look at her, and I could see it was driving her nuts. I hated what happened back then more for what it did to her than what it did to me, the team, the coaching staff, the fans or anybody."
LaRoche had become one of the worst everyday players in Major League Baseball in those first two months with the Pirates. April 24, his batting average was .098. May 25, after a microburst quickly was exposed as a mirage, it was at .191.
Moreover, he had struck out 43 times in 157 at-bats, an astounding 27 percent.
That was well short of the messianic expectations that accompanied his arrival from the Atlanta Braves in January as the main piece of the Pirates' highest-profile trade in years. And the predictable result was a public backlash, mostly in the form of steady booing at PNC Park.
For LaRoche's wife, Jenn, it was too much to bear.
"I used to go to every game when Adam played in Atlanta, and I mean every single game," she said by phone from the family ranch in Kansas. "I stopped going in Pittsburgh after two weeks."
Why was that?
"I felt like I just wanted to fight the whole crowd. I knew it didn't bother Adam, but I couldn't handle the idea of anyone saying or doing anything to hurt him. He's such a great person, a great father, and I just can't imagine anyone booing him."
So, she sat at home, stewing.
"I knew he'd come out of it. But it was still so hard, seeing that, and trying to understand it."
Bombs away
It was hard for baseball insiders to figure, too.
It gets no easier now that LaRoche has recovered dramatically to get his key numbers up to .266 with 19 home runs and 77 RBIs.
Those strikeouts?
He has only six in his past 67 at-bats, 103 in all.
"That's the amazing number, to me," manager Jim Tracy said. "From where he was ..."
Wait, there is more ...
LaRoche has batted .346 with 11 home runs and 37 RBIs since June 28. In that span, the only better mark among all first basemen in the majors is the .349 of the St. Louis Cardinals' Albert Pujols.
As an added bonus, LaRoche has shaken his long-cumbersome platoon-player label by batting .301 against left-handers. His previous career mark: .228.
So, what did it?
What converted LaRoche from a strikeout machine into, finally, the left-handed power bat the Pirates so long have needed? LaRoche described the solution as "90 percent mental."
"If you don't step into that box with 100 percent confidence, more times than not, nothing good's going to come out of it. I was pressing. And it didn't help that I was in a new city, trying to make a good impression."
His first step was to expunge the statistics from his life.
"I guarantee you I went a month without looking at them, from late May until just before the All-Star break. Somebody would ask me what I'm hitting, and I'd say, 'All I know is it's between .200 and .240.' Honestly, I didn't care. I needed to have fun again."
He gave credit to his new teammates for keeping him cool and, away from the clubhouse, to his father, Dave, minor-league pitching coach for the Toronto Blue Jays.
"He just made jokes about it. He doesn't take a whole lot too seriously, and that helped."
The fun resumed -- for real this time -- a bit before the break, when LaRoche went on a 16-for-32 tear. By no coincidence, he had just begun hitting the ball to the opposite field. And that was where the other 10 percent of his solution, the technical aspect, was pivotal.
All through April and May, LaRoche stood so far off the plate that pitchers routinely painted the outside corner and retired him without a swing. Combined with LaRoche's naturally docile body language, it must have made him look to some as if he were forfeiting at-bats.
Ugly with a capital K.
His response -- again, just before the break -- was to move a full 6 inches closer to the plate, in effect altering his strike zone.
"I wasn't hitting the ball the other way," LaRoche explained. "So, I said to myself that I'm going to try to pull everything."
Say what?
"I had to get back to hitting that pitch on the outer corner. And, to get that, I needed to have those pitches look like strikes to me."
But that means ...
"Yeah, I know. If they painted me inside, they had me. But I had to give up something to get back that pitch away. That pitch suddenly looked like a strike to me, and I started swinging full-bore again, just like I do when I pull the ball. So, I started driving the balls in the middle to center field and the balls away to the opposite field."
None of which has a terribly fundamental sound to it.
"Don't try this, kids. It's not something I'd ever teach anyone."
And now?
"I've moved back a little. But I'm still up on the plate pretty good."
That showed Friday night in Houston, when LaRoche stayed with Travis Driskill's splitter on the outside corner and sent it the opposite way for that three-run home run in the 15th inning.
The one aspect of LaRoche's approach that never changed, by every account, was the long, powerful swing that has drawn praise across baseball for years.
"People talked about his swing when things weren't going well, but we talked about nothing but rhythm," Pirates hitting coach Jeff Manto said. "There was nothing -- nothing -- wrong with his swing. He just wasn't comfortable. I told him back in April, 'Man, you are going to be a great story by the end of September.' And he's made a hell of a comeback. He really has."
Defusing the next bomb
Despite the let-life-happen exterior, LaRoche admits to some serious anguish in April and May.
"It wasn't the comments that hurt or the booing. It was the facts," he said. "It was looking at the numbers and saying, 'Man, I am 0 for 20.' That's what gets you. You know you're good, but you see the facts and ... those numbers hurt."
Now that he has remained in a good groove for quite a while, fresh off a six-RBI weekend in Houston, he insists every aspect of the slump is behind him.
"I've forgotten about it, really."
But then, he quickly corrected himself.
"Well, except one thing: How many more games would we have won if I started better? We probably wouldn't be in first place, but how much closer would we be, especially with how we've played lately? You can't erase that part of it."
No, but he can try to change that slow-starting trait -- he is a .184 career hitter in April -- when the Pirates reconvene in 2008.
"I'm already thinking about it," LaRoche said. "I need to change something. I've always been a guy who hasn't done really well out of the gate, but I always just shrugged it off like it's a coincidence. Not next year. This can't happen again."
To that end, LaRoche is pondering doing less work on his 2,500-acre ranch, the duty that dominates his offseason. He might take fewer at-bats in spring training, too, this after regularly adding minor-league games to his docket for extra swings.
He also might stop thinking about numbers altogether.
"I need to get rid of this idea that I'm going to have career highs in everything. The team goal will be the same. The team goal will be that we're going to win the division. But, individually, I set the standard so high that, if I get zero RBIs one week, I need 10 the next week. That's it. No goals. Have fun. Win games."
Sounds like a formula to get the wife back to the ballpark.
Jenn LaRoche has been back on the North Shore more often lately, but it seems that she, unlike her husband, still has some healing to do.
"Everybody's cheering for him in Pittsburgh now, and me ... I just want to say, 'Um, excuse me, weren't you guys just booing him?' Believe me, you don't forget. It's a shame but, even now that he's doing well, I still go there and think about how it was for those two months."
First published at PG NOW on August 27, 2007 at 11:17 pm
Dejan Kovacevic can be reached at dkovacevic@post-gazette.com.
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