Baseball Notebook: LaRoche Pulls a Jody Reed

Adam LaRoche who played for the Pirates, Red Sox and Braves in 2009 has agreed with the Diamondback on a one year contract for $4.5 to $5 million after rejecting a two year contract offer from the Giants for two years at $17.5 million.

Jody Reed rejected a three year contract offer by the Dodgers of $3.8 million for three years for the 1994 baseball season. He wound up signing for the major league minimum in the neighborhood of $100,000 with the Breweres. He did earn $750,000 with incentives that season but still took a huge loss since he would have earned over $1.2 million if he had accepted the Dodgers offer.

Move the calendar ahead to January of 2010 and Adam LaRoche has made a similar bad decision by rejecting a  two year $17.5 million offer by the Giants. Instead he has agreed to a one year contract with the Diamondbacks for a reported $4.5 to $5 million.

LaRoche was holding out for a three year contract and that mistake will cost him at least approximately $6 million a year the next two years.

Instead of earning $17.5 million for two years he will make only $4.5-$5 million for one year. He will be losing close to $12 million compared to what he would have made had he accepted the Giants offer. In fact he is taking a $2.05 million paycut after being paid $7.05 million in 2009.

I noticed he is not on the list of clients for Scott Boras. I am not a Boras fan but LaRoche would have fared better if he had been a Boras client.

It will be interesting to see if  he gets off to his usual slow start with the Diamondbacks. Last season he had a .738 OPS in the first half and a .915 mark in the second half and hit .250 before the All Star break and hit .311 the rest of the season.