Two Reasons Why Matt Carpenter Stays In Memphis
Posted on May 2nd, 2011 by azruavatar in Matt CarpenterDavid Freese is down with a broken hand it took just moments for people to wonder whether Matt Carpenter would be or could be a viable replacement. Take a cold shower guys, there’s two good reasons not to expect this.
The first is that Matt Carpenter’s performance so far has been good but not particularly great. After an atrociously slow start, Carpenter has a .794 OPS featuring a .402 OBP. He’s working his typical plate discipline magic walking in over 14% of his plate appearances. I’ve made many remarks on his astoundingly good plate discipline and knowledge of the strikezone so the point here isn’t that his skillset won’t play up. I think it will.
A .794 OPS, even an OBP heavy one is not that far off the average mark for Memphis’s run environment. Fangraphs has a stat labeled wRC+. This statistic park adjusts and league adjusts to allow for comparisons of offensive output among AAA players. It’s a linear weights based stat whose core is a version of Tom Tango’s wOBA. That is to say it’s a very accurate measure of the relative offensive output of a player. Right now, Matt Carpenter has a 106 wRC+ meaning he’s playing a little better than average (100 is average). That’s good but it isn’t anything that screams “Call Up.”
The other reason you’re unlikely to see a Matt Carpenter call up is that he’s not on the 40-man roster. To add to that, the 40-man roster is full. There are a couple players that could get dropped but the club may not be willing to do that. If a starter lands on the 15-day disabled list, who gets the spot start? Unless you want a bullpen game, it’s probably PJ Walters. David Kopp was just added to the 40-man roster this offseason and remains on the DL. To place Adam Reifer on the 60-day DL essentially requires the Cardinals to pay him a major league salary and, more detrimentally, start his service time.
Those are the most likely candidates to bump off but it’s hard to see any of them being removed from the 40-man roster right now. The Cardinals also have a plethora of utility style guys to move about the infield (Tyler Greene, Nick Punto, Daniel Descalso, Ryan Theriot, Skip Schumaker [DL]) already on the roster. Isn’t this the express purpose of their inclusion? As a short term stop-gap if a starter goes down.
Matt Carpenter makes a lot of sense for this team if he continues to get on base at such an impressive rate. He just doesn’t make a lot of sense for the major league ball club right now.
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Won’t this assessment hinge in part on freese’s recovery time? If this is a 4-6 week issue, matt probably stays in AAA. If it’s a 12 week issue, the limitations of our backups will look worse, and the procedural difficulties won’t seem as significant.
On the other hand, if it’s a 12-week issue, then the need will still exist after the first of June, beyond which the service-time clock doesn’t have as big a negative attached to it (right?). They might make a move then that it would be premature to make now.
The big thing, though, is: will promoting Carpenter help the team win?
Quite the prescient question — Freese is out 9-12 weeks. Seems like a Carpenter callup more likely but I think the club likes Descalso enough to see what he can do there offensively for a while.
Probably platoon in Craig @ 3B as well. As far as M Carp goes, I personally think the only issue should be whether he helps the team now. Of course the organization cares about extra costs but I as a fan do not. I’m just not sympathetic to the argument of saving small $s when this potentially could be Albert Pujol’s last season in STL. I’m not suggesting we trade the farm for rentals, merely not get cheap about a few hundred thousand dollars one way or the other and make a decision about players like M Carp for baseball reasons as opposed to business reasons.
I’d agree with you only we need a good 3rd baseman and he’s the best candidate from a player standpoint. His high OBP makes him a candidate for leadoff or #2. Descalso is likely to be exposed if he gets an everyday job. Punto is OK at 3rd if we don’t care that the skill position has a .600 OPS.
That 40 man roster thingy is just a complication. Taking Kopp off wouldn’t create a major incident.
You have forgotten the guy that through his own poor performance has shot to the lead in the “next guy removed from the 40 man roster ” pool — Blake King. He was a long shot to be put there anyway. I dont see them removing Kopp without even getting a look at him.
The other thing about Carpenter and the 40 man roster is that he doesn´t even have to be added this Winter so that´s one more spot for someone else in the off season if we can keep from adding him this year.
Yes but we’re a contending team, currently in first place, and if Carpenter fits best on the team, we probably ought to say to hell with the 40 man roster impediment. Now, maybe Descalso is the best fit at third. But, I kinda think Carpenter might be.
Two months is a long time to experiment with Descalso and Punto.
Agreed, the club has flexibility w/ Carpenter and understandably should be hesitant to add him to the 40 man. There is no rush here. The club needs to determine (1) how long Freese will be out and (2) evaluate the performance of his replacements. If 3rd becomes a black hole, w/ Freese far from return, Carpenter should get the call after several weeks.
You have to take age into consideration. Reifer is 25, turns 26 in June, so the service clock really isn’t that big of an an issue. Even if he turns out to be a stud, he is under controll until 31. They already had to use an option on him.
Also, Carpenter is 25 so adding him to the 25 man roster is not that big of a deal either. If he is 29 and not yet made the club, he is probalby not that big of loss.
One nuance with Reifer is that if you put him on the 60 day DL (and dont release him in the Winter) if he is not ready to go by the start of the next season he has to be put on the major league DL again. More Service time and also more major league salary.
I’m betting we see Carpenter in a month or so. Freese, as good as he’s been when healthy, appears destined for disaster. Whatever the predicted recuperation time is for him he’ll have some set back that’ll extend it. The roster issue doesn’t seem insurmountable. If Matt hits well for the next few weeks his bat is going to look too good to keep on the farm. None of the replacements is capable of the kind of offensive charge that would keep them at 3b for any length of time.
If carpenter isn’t ready now, he probably isn’t going to be ready in a month. No point in jumping through all the roster hoops for a few weeks a month from now. If they are going to make a move, they will do it soon.
This was a freak accident, wholly unrelated to the chronic issues that shelved Freese last year. Players break hands as the result of inside fastballs consistently. We’re talking about a short-term replacement here. Freese is the 3rd basement of the present and the future once he returns. The only risk w/ Freese is whether his ankle(s) hold up.
If Carpenter is called up, he will not play 3rd exclusively, as he will get time in the outfield. When Freese comes back and if Carpenter remains, Freese will be the everyday 3rd basemen. Freese has shown a solid glove and an above-average bat (when healthy). Too bad this happened…he was really starting to take off.
It’s fair to ask whether that HBP would have broken other players’ hands. Not everyone has bones of equal strength versus impact. My feeling is that it probably would have — I saw it happen and immediately suspected a fracture — but I’m not completely willing to say this injury had nothing to do with Freese’s reputation for being fragile. Pity, because you’re right, he was taking off.
the striking thing to me was the distance the ball went after hitting his hand. it looked like it bounced all the way back to the net. if a ball hits flesh, a lot of the energy in the collision is lost. instead, the pitch bounced like it had hit a brick. it must have hit nothing but bone.
Put Freese on 60-day and bring up Carp.
The Cards could try Craig at 3B for a couple of weeks, give him an audition. He might hit enough. Or they could waste a month with Punto, Greene, and Descalso at 3B, until they get sick of them. At that rate, Matt Carpenter may get a promotion around mid June.
Agree, I dont think Carpenter is out of the equation but I´d guess they try it without him first and see if someone steps up.
The thing that annoys me about LaRussa is that he won’t put Craig at 3B because of his defense, yet he has no problem writing Theriot in at SS every night.
I know you are probably correct that Carp is not coming up anytime soon….but I hope you’re wrong.
I would love to see how his OB skills and LH bat play in the 2 hole in the Cards lineup
The person who really needs to leave the 40-man roster is Ryan Franklin by way of the waiver wire and/or the more likely unconditional release. This, however, almost certainly won’t happen because the Cardinals don’t want to have to pay him his big salary unless he is on the roster. They would much rather pay him for messing up every game he appears in than for simply going away and not being able to mess things up.