Adam LaRoche and his son

Yeah, would be interesting to see what would have happened if this was Jose Abreu's kid.

 

What else could they do? He was terrible last year, and the money's already committed.

 

If LaRoche wants his son to be around 100 percent of the time, well, he now has the perfect opportunity to do that as an unemployed person.

 

The contract is guaranteed. They can't just jettison it off the books.

 

But if he retires voluntarily, he forfeits the money.

 

They did, but Dunn was one of the most consistent hitters in baseball for eight or nine years before they signed him to that deal.

I think some guys just can't DH. It's a big wild card in these N.L.-to-A.L. signings.

The thing is that Abreu isn't a very good defensive first baseman, but LaRoche is.

 

Right, right. I was responding to the "reduced role" post, i.e. I thought you had implied that since they are paying him $13 million, they shouldn't reduce his role.

 

But he still would have been a valuable bench player. Even at $13 million, if they thought he was better as a left-handed bat off the bench than what they could replace him with from the minors or the waiver wire or via trade, then there's no reason to release him.

And I don't know that they did this to force him into retirement. If that were the case, they should have done it months ago, when there was still an active free agent market.