Just a few days after the Miami Marlins reportedly made a 2 year, $20 million offer to the former Nationals first baseman Adam LaRoche, it is reported by several sources that he has signed with the Chicago White Sox on Friday evening to the tune of 2 years and $25 million. This will be excellent for a young White Sox squad that needed more power hitting in their lineup as they would struggle to score runs many times throughout the year last year. He will probably platoon with Jose Abreu between who manager Robin Ventura decides to play at first base and designated hitter on different days. Also, it is not easy to find a power hitting lefty, so despite the fact that LaRoche is 35 years of age, he should fit in well on the White Sox. Strangely enough, the last power hitting lefty first baseman the White Sox signed before Abreu was also a Washington National, albeit by the name of Adam Dunn, who recently retired from baseball after being traded from the White Sox to the Athletics this past season.
This will be the second time that LaRoche has been in the American League, his previous time being a 6 game stint in 2009 for the Boston Red Sox. Over the past three seasons LaRoche has put up an average of 26 Home Runs and 85 RBI's. One thing is for certain, the White Sox needed to invest in some more power in order to compete in the American League Central, with the division winning Detroit Tigers and World Series representative Kansas City Royals. Hopefully this is not the last of their moves, but indeed many more to come to bring in some more power bats and good arms, both for the rotation and for the bullpen. Because the White Sox have a lot of work to do to turn around their 73-89 record from last season.