I’ve been slacking in this area, so let’s resume our Cardinals’ 2016 player previews …
Today: Third baseman Matt Carpenter, age 30. He’s entering his fifth full season with the Cardinals.
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Carpenter hit a home run every 20.5 at bats during the 2015 season.
Recapping 2015: Carpenter traded patience for power, swinging more aggressively to hit a career-high 28 homers, with 44 doubles. Carpenter had never homered more than 11 times in a season; that in 2013. And after hitting a homer every 74 at-bats in 2014, Carpenter put one into the seats every 20.5 ABs last season. But there was a price for the big increase in jacks; Carpenter’s strikeout total increased from 15.7 percent in 2014 to 22.7% in ’15.
His swing-and-miss rate went from 12 percent in 2014 to 21.5 percent in ’15. As a result Carpenter’s contact rate dropped 10 points (to 80 percent) from 2014, and he put the ball in play at a career-low rate of 39 percent.
Looking at his overall numbers for 2015, Carpenter batted .272 with a .365 onbase percentage, career-best .505 slugging percentage, a career-high .233 ISO (isolated power). He drove in 84 runs and scored 101 runs. There were problems including a fatigue issue that prompted the Cardinals to shut Carpenter down for a few days in June; he batted only .190 for the month with a faint .247 slugging percentage and .577 OPS.
Carpenter really powered up after the All-Star break, pounding 19 homers with a .591 slugging percentage. All in all a very good season. A season, according to Wins Above Replacement, was worth 5.2 wins to the Cardinals.
Leading off, batting first, the Onbase Machine: He’s no Vince Coleman in the speed-demon, base-stealing, base-running aspect of the game. But if you believe that a No. 1 hitter’s top obligation is to get on base at a healthy rate to set up run-scoring chances for the middle-lineup hitters, then Carpenter is the one. Since STATS began tracking onbase percentages for specific batting-order spots in 1974, only five hitters have posted a better career leadoff OBP than Carpenter’s .387. And three of the guys (Rod Carew, Rickey Henderson, Wade Boggs) are Hall of Famers. And Carpenter’s power makes him one of the more dangerous hitters to occupy the No. 1 spot since ’74; his leadoff slugging percentage of .473 is tied for seventh.
Cardinals manager Mike Matheny tried to cultivate Kolten Wong as a leadoff hitter in 2015 but the experiment flopped, with Wong getting on base only 30 percent of the time when batting No. 1. Carpenter reached base just under 39 percent of the time as the leadoff hitter in 2015.
Is the aggressive approach worth it? That’s a key question. As we noted, M-Carp’s strikeout rate spiked substantially in 2015. We have a tendency to obsess over strikeouts, and obviously Carpenter is more capable of inflicting damage if he makes more consistent contact. But the notion of Carpenter as a free-swinging hitter would be inaccurate. He still saw 4.22 pitches per plate appearances in 2015 — the fifth-most among all MLB hitters. He took 61 percent of the pitches offered to him; only seven MLB hitters watched more go by.
Carpenter did chase more often in 2015, with 23 percent of his swings coming on pitches out of the strike zone. But that chase rate, while up by six points compared to 2014, was pretty much in line with his chase rates in 2012 and 2013. Carpenter also maintained a very fine walk rate of 12.2 percent — which was actually above his career rate of 11.7%.
I don’t believe the increase in strikeouts occurred through a glaring lack of discipline or a careless approach. The reason for the spike in strikeouts was Carpenter’s attempt to cut down on his ground-ball rate and to get the ball into the air more frequently.
And it worked.
For the first time in his career Carpenter hit more fly balls than ground balls. Not only that but those flies traveled a greater average distance compared to Carp’s seasons past — and he ended up with a career-tops 16 percent home run / per fly ball ratio. Here’s my personal bottom line, and I’ll use the Bill James stat of Runs Created/27 … which simply means this: if one player could make every plate appearance in a game for his team, how many runs would his team produce in nine innings?
Here’s Carpenter’s yearly RC/27:
2012: 5.6 runs
2013: 7.3 runs
2014: 5.5 runs
2015: 6.9 runs
Not surprisingly, the only time Carpenter had a higher RC/27 was 2013 when he stroked 55 doubles, 11 homers and a .481 slugging percentage. And for a Cardinals team that has come up short in power ball in recent seasons, Carpenter’s power has extra value. Using the RC/27 measure, Carpenter’s more aggressive attack increased the team’s run capability. He did his share. If the Cardinals struggled offensively last season — and they ranked 24th in runs — it wasn’t because Carpenter struck out more times than ever before in his career. It’s because other hitters needed to do more and didn’t — whether it be injuries, second-half fatigue, or the inevitable decline phase. Could Carpenter strive for a little more balance between the two approaches in an attempt to be more discerning and lower his K rate? He says that’s his goal; we’ll see how he goes at it in ’16.But if he can find a way to sort of blend 2013 and 2015, that would be the sweet zone.
Defense: Carpenter had a rough time at third base last season, with minus 10 Defensive Runs Saved to rank 32nd at the position. Using the Fielding Bible’s plus-minus metric he was a minus 15 on grounders last season; having problems on balls hit to his left (minus 7) and to his right (minus 10.) He was a plus 2 on balls hit straight at him.
The Projection: The ZiPS forecast is interesting in that it comes up with fewer home runs (16) but also a lower onbase percentage (.362) for Carpenter in 2016. The overall forecast, based on 628 plate appearances: 16 homers, 71 RBIs, .272 average, .362 OBP, .442 slugging, .804 OPS, 3.5 WAR and a drop to 120 in OPS+. That seems light to me; sorry ZiPS but I’ll take the over. Carpenter shows no signs of decline, and offensively his power-OBP combo is what teams want more than anything. We can deduct points for his defense, yes. But this bat — which sort of covers every genre of hitting — enhances an offense, whether he’s hitting 8 homers or 28. Carpenter may not match his HR/Fly ratio from last year, but even if he drops to around 20 homers that’s perfectly acceptable.
General outlook: We need to understand that the Carpenter that hits a lot of homers while maintaining a high OBP but striking out more is still more valuable than the Carpenter that hits fewer homers, maintains a high OBP and strikes out less. It isn’t even close. Carpenter had an OPS+ of 134 last season, meaning that he was 34 percent above the league average. Again, I appreciate his desire to modify again in 2016…but Carpenter is such a force offensively I’d hate to see him deviate too much from his 2015 mindset. If he can tinker trim the number of strikeouts without sacrificing too much power, great. But is that mandatory? Heck, no.
Thanks for reading …
–Bernie
Read all of Bernie’s 2016 Cardinals Player Previews here.
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