As Adam packs his bags, I scratch my head...

Things could have been a lot worse yesterday, around noon, when one of my co-workers came over to my desk, looking somber, and simply asked, "Did you hear the news?  Are you OK?"

My heart sank.  I dared to ask the question, "Did they trade Jack?"

"No."

"Freddy?"

"No...I'm not even sure if you like this guy.  He strikes out too much for me."

And I knew, in that moment.

"Adam LaRoche?!"

My co-worker nodded, at which point my incredulity reached a fevered pitch.  How in the world had Neal Huntington wrangled two prospects -- and from a respected Red Sox organization, no less -- in exchange for the man Pittsburgh sports fans had derisively taken to calling, "LaChoke"?  How had Huntington managed to get anyone in return?  Had he pulled the wool over Boston GM Theo Epstein's eyes?  Had he duped the entire Red Sox front office?  Or maybe, just maybe, did Boston see in Adam LaRoche what the fans in Pittsburgh never took the time to?

I'll admit to not having much of an opinion on Adam LaRoche when he was here.  Yes, I would groan when I saw he was coming up to bat in a key situation, and yes, his name would be the one most often uttered in frustration while watching the game on TV (it happened as recently as Tuesday night, in fact, when I also punched the sofa cushion loudly enough to wake one of my cats from a sound sleep).  But I never had the kind of honest-to-goodness hatred that a lot of Pirates fans seemed to feel for LaRoche.

So what was it about him, exactly?  And what made things go so terribly wrong?  If you were living in Pittsburgh in early 2007, you remember the excitement that came when the Bucs acquired LaRoche.  You remember the ovations that greeted him at PirateFest, and the mantle of "franchise savior" that was bestowed upon him, making him the latest in a long line of Pirates to merit such a distinction.  Plans were made for his bobblehead night (June 2, 2007), and given the short left-field porch at PNC Park and LaRoche's undeniably gorgeous swing, surely visions of 40 home run seasons (a rarity in these parts) danced through Pirate fans' heads.  The most optimistic among us looked to his time in a winning Braves' organization as evidence that he would be a big help when the Pirates made their long-awaited playoff run.

But then the 2007 season started, and LaRoche got off to one of his abyssmally slow starts, and the numbers tailed off considerably from those compiled in 2006 in Atlanta.

...But did they, really?  I just hopped over to baseball-reference.com to get some numerical evidence, and it's not nearly as salient as everyone's hatred of LaRoche might suggest.  In 2006, he hit 32 home runs and drove in 90.  In 2007, the numbers were 21 and 88; in 2008, 25 and 85.  Granted, he was struggling quite a bit this year (his .247 average and .770 OPS are about all you need to come to that conclusion), but was his stint in Pittsburgh really as bad as everyone would like to believe?

I think the case of Adam LaRoche comes -- as is so often the case in baseball -- down to the intangibles.  Because let's face it, for every RBI he had, there were a half dozen opportunities where he didn't get the job done.  For every home run he had, there were two or three strikeouts, or a rally-killing GIDP (ahem last Sunday ahem).  The more clutch the situation, it seemed, the more LaRoche fell short.

But my question to you, dear reader, is, was it really all his fault?  After all, "savior of the franchise" is a lot of pressure to put on somebody, particularly somebody with his makeup.  Obviously, he is a Major League ballplayer, but the tools of an Andrew McCutchen or a Pedro Alvarez (the latest two to carry the "savior" burden) are simply not there.  McCutchen seems, to this point, capable of living up to the hype.  In fact, he seems to enjoy it.  LaRoche?  Well, he was, admittedly, happier perched out in the frozen fields of Kansas during an offseason hunt than bearing the weight of thousands of fans' expectations, made all the more unbearable, in fact, by sixteen years of losing.

And that's the other thing, too, that I think was a problem during LaRoche's stint in Pittsburgh.  Somebody pointed this out the other day on sports talk radio, and I think it's a good point.  Adam's personality doesn't gel with that of Pittsburgh.  He's laid-back and low-energy (which is not to be read as low-passion).  He doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve.  Pittsburghers?  We're gritty and hard-nosed.  We go full bore into everything.  We not only wear our hearts on our sleeves; we dress our babies in black and gold onesies and wear T-shirts declaring, "If you ain't a Steeler fan, you ain't ****".  We show our passion, and expect our athletes to do the same.

But I don't want that if it means a guy has to be someone he's not.  LaRoche obviously tried his best while he was here, and although I'm not sorry to see him go, my opinion on the subject really has nothing to do with sentiment against him.  It's more focused on what his departure means for the rest of the Pirates' team, which, it seems to me, is getting thatclose to being all done with their wheeling and dealing.  The remainder of his $7 million salary?  I'm hoping the Pirates split that up and add it to their offers to Freddy and Jack.  The playing time at first base?  I'm hoping it goes to Garrett Jones, with Brandon Moss and Delwyn Young ending their platoon and becoming the everyday starting corner outfielders.  I'm starting to think we just might have something here.

So I agree with what Rocco said yesterday in recounting the trade -- let's not dance on Adam LaRoche's grave.  I think we can all agree that his time in Pittsburgh didn't work out the way anyone anticipated.  But that's the way life goes sometimes.  We may never know exactly why Adam LaRoche and the Pirates weren't a good fit, but it was clearly time for both parties to move on.  And not only do I feel like the Pirates are a better team today than they were two days ago, but I think Adam LaRoche is in a better situation as well.  For him, for his playing style, and for his personality.  We in Pittsburgh never really embraced any of those things, and I hope he finds in Boston whatever was missing here.