Unlucky or ominous signs? Carpenter’s output presents dilemma for St. Louis Cardinals
The arc of the home run which Matt Carpenter clanged off the right field foul pole at Busch Stadium on April 13 was high enough that it gave the crowd time to inhale and then exhale in a rush alongside the Cardinals embattled infielder.
Baseball tells its own stories, and following up a breakthrough bunt single from the night before with a majestic drive with an unusual shape was surely the way we would tell the story of Carpenter’s 2021 turnaround.
Not all stories have a predictable structure.
In the seven games following what may have been — was willed to be, from all corners — Carpenter’s breakout, he went 1-for-19 with 10 strikeouts and not a single walk. Those seven games featured four multi-strikeout games; those four games covered all but one of his starts in the field.
The questions have not changed as the season’s first month approaches its close. Neither have the answers, though perhaps a more ominous sign is they’re running out.
“Sometimes there’s not an answer to it,” Cardinals manager Mike Shildt said Wednesday after Carpenter lined out with the bases loaded in the eighth inning to end a potentially game-tying rally. “And it’s very rare when I don’t have at least some answer as part of my obligation to you, but I don’t have a great answer for any more that Matt Carpenter can do.
“Gosh darn, you know, the guy’s hitting balls square. We do recognize the shift is a part of it. But, man, so it’s definitely frustrating for him. And we’ll continue to see what it looks like.”
What it looks like is mostly the picture which Shildt and the team have described throughout spring training and the early part of the season, though, with perhaps more color around the edges.
Per MLB’s Baseball Savant, as of the start of play Friday, Carpenter’s 2021 average exit velocity is harder than all but 4% of players in baseball; in hard hit percentage, he leads all but the top 2%. He lays off pitches out of the strike zone better than 86% of hitters, and there’s no one in baseball — he’s in the 100th percentile — who puts the ball on the barrel more often when they make contact.
Avoiding strikeouts recurring issue for Carpenter
It’s making contact that has become a serious challenge. Carpenter’s in the 10th percentile of whiff percentage; 90% of hitters in the majors are more likely to make contact on a given swing than he is. And he’s in the fifth percentile of strikeout rate; take a random group of 100 Major Leaguers from the 2021 season and 95 of them will have struck out less frequently than Matt Carpenter.
The publicly available data has been pored over for countless hours, but it’s private data which might be more likely to reveal an issue. The Cardinals make extensive use of Blast Motion sensors which measure, among other things, bat speed.
Increased drag of Carpenter’s bat through the zone would certainly comport with the eye test and could help explain why he’s being attacked purely through velocity and movement rather than changing speeds; his percentage of breaking balls seen has ticked up and offspeed pitches seen has trended down, and the fastball percentage against him has remained steady.
Williams, young Cardinals outfielders
Complicating the Carpenter question has been the emergence of Justin Williams as a sincere option in the corner outfield as a left-handed bat. The Cardinals for months have said they’re eager for one or more of their young outfielders to seize an opportunity, and with injuries to Harrison Bader and Tyler O’Neill, Williams has done so, displaying patience and power from low in the lineup.
With Bader and O’Neill on the mend, a roster crunch will descend upon the Cardinals in due time. There’s still space for Carpenter even with those two healthy, given the relative redundancy of Austin Dean and John Nogowski, but his improvement will have to be more than a mirage for the Cardinals to remain as committed to him as they have been.
“When a guy’s taking good at bats and he’s an accomplished guy in this league, you tend to go with him. Like I said, there’s no reason overly not to,” Shildt explained. “If he’s hitting weak ground balls and popping up and striking out a lot and not taking his walks then clearly we would adjust, but he’s putting good swings on the baseball.”
Hard contact, Ks up, walks down
Shildt is correct that Carpenter isn’t hitting weak ground balls (they’re hard) or popping up (they’re fly outs), but his strikeouts are up and his walks are down. Those are ominous signs.
The Cardinals have organizational, historical, and financial commitments to Matt Carpenter which matter. His relationships in the clubhouse matter; Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt both count him among their closest Cardinal confidants. His flexibility and handedness matter; he’s an adequate defender at two positions and offers, at least in theory, lefty balance to the bench.
He just flat has to make more contact, or some of those commitments and relationships will begin to shrink in value. Carpenter’s earned the right to write the story he deserves, but calendar pages will bring deadlines, and his is not indefinite.
