Secretly, LaRoche would like to pitch
PITTSBURGH (AP) – The Pittsburgh Pirates traded for first baseman Adam LaRoche to raise opposing pitchers’ ERAs, not lower that of their own pitching staff. Still, deep down inside the man who figures to be the Pirates’ cleanup hitter is a pitcher waiting to make his major league debut.
LaRoche is the son of former major league pitcher Dave LaRoche, a left-hander who was the last major leaguer to throw the so-called eephus pitch. The pitch looks like that thrown in slow-pitch softball, hanging as high as 20 feet in the air before dropping into the strike zone. Dave LaRoche called his version of it La Lob.
Adam LaRoche was taught by his father how to throw the pitch, even though he hasn’t done so in years, and he would like to step on the mound sometime before his major league career is over.
Asked if he can give manager Jim Tracy an inning or two some time in a blowout game, LaRoche said, “Hey, I can give them an inning in a 1-1 game. I love pitching, but I haven’t done it for so long and I miss it.”
The 27-year-old LaRoche was considered a better pitching prospect than he was a hitter after coming out of high school and junior college. But he was drafted by the Braves after being chosen as the top player in the 2000 junior college World Series and has remained a position player since.
He pitched twice in the minors, winning a game for Myrtle Beach in 2001, but has never pitched in a major league game. Yet.
And what better place for him to try out his eephus pitch than Pittsburgh? Former Pirates pitcher Rip Sewell is the best known practitioner of the eephus ball, throwing it regularly to the top hitters in the game while twice winning more than 20 games.
In over 300 major league games, Sewell never gave up a homer on a pitch also known as the dew drop, but Ted Williams did homer against him in the 1946 All-Star game. However, Sewell told Williams the pitch was coming, and Williams took a running and, possibly, illegal start in which he was out of the batter’s box when the pitch arrived.
“Yeah, my dad used to throw the pitch to me when I was a kid,” Adam LaRoche said. “Everybody says you can’t hit it, but you can hit it – but you have to know it’s coming. Knowing when something is coming in there at 25 miles per hour, that’s the trick to it.”
LaRoche, who attended Fort Scott Community College and Seminole State College, threw the pitch in college but says now, “I don’t know if I can remember how to throw it.”
The Pirates are much more excited about the offense LaRoche brings to a team that has been among the majors’ worst offensive clubs the last couple of seasons. LaRoche had 52 homers and 168 RBIs the last two seasons with Atlanta.
“I can’t tell you it was a great feeling getting out of Atlanta,” LaRoche said of his initial reaction to the Jan. 17 trade that sent reliever Mike Gonzalez to the Braves. “It’s a good organization, a winning organization, so to leave there my first thought was not good.
“But it totally reversed when I got Pittsburgh and sat down with everybody and heard the direction in which they’re going and saw the excitement of everybody. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
On the mound or not.