Archive for the “Matt Carpenter” Category

As of the time of this writing, 271 people voted in yesterday’s poll and 55% of you would utilize Matt Carpenter in a kind of super utility role between the corner outfield, corner infield and second base positions. there’s not a wrong answer to yesterday’s question and I think I personally would be inclined to keep in majors in that role as well.

One of the comments caught my eye, however. Lou Schuler wrote:

I love [Carpenter] as a utility player, but [Zack] Cox looks like a guy who’s going to be an everyday player hitting in the top half of the lineup.

It struck me as an undervaluation of Carpenter (the “utility player” label) but it’s one that I think consistently happens to him because of his somewhat unusual offensive profile.  Assume that Matt Carpenter is going to have an OBP between .320 and .340 (ZiPS projects .342). Since wOBA is scaled to OBP, we can use that as a decent approximation for his production. For someone with limited power potential, we would scale that number down slightly from his OBP.  That range (.320-340) is still going to make Matt Carpenter a league average-ish player.

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After hitting .302/.419/.465 in over 500 plate appearances at AAA, Matt Carpenter finds himself in the unenviable position of being behind David Freese on the depth chart. Both players have similar offensive projections for 2012 but David Freese has (1) won a World Series MVP trophy and (2) proven that he can put up his numbers in the majors.

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The appeals have already been made here and elsewhere to see Tyler Greene get the lion’s share of playing time this September. Shortstop is an obvious problem and one that needs addressing for the future. Ryan Theriot has proven that whatever defense might have been expected from him entering the season, simply was more than what he actually brought to the table.

To use a quick tautology: Apparent problems are obvious.  Do the Cardinals have a less apparent problem that they should be dealing with.

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I’m not a big fan of player comps.  Since we have few objective measures of a player’s tools, the comparisons are highly subjective.  There’s also an element of memory involved that I’m skeptical of. A lot of the comparisons made are to players who haven’t played in years — if you ask two people what that players career looked like, you’d probably get two different answers. Humans have a tendency to warp memories to a narrative.

Of course, there’s also the dreaded HoF comparison where a player is compared to the elite outliers of a huge dataset of players. It’s nonsensical to draw straight lines between a new sample/player and a known outlier/Hall-of-Famer but those comparisons happen all the time.

If two players have a similar body type or swing and they they achieve vastly different results with those building blocks, should we care that they looked the same or had the same swing plane? Fundamentally, this is the argument for a player projection system built on statistical comparisons (ZiPS, PECOTA, etc) and that’s a model that I’d rather more adhere to.  Matt Carpenter continues to be an interesting and unusual player to me. He doesn’t hit for much power, he walks a ton and hits for a good average. Can we find anyone in the last decade that looks like that statistically?

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Update II: And Joe Strauss confirms the Matt Carpenter callup.

Update: First shoe drops – Kozma sent down, Mark Hamilton called up per Matthew Leach. Maikel Cleto remains on the roster but one has to wonder how long the Cardinals continue with 13 pitchers.

The rumors are starting to fly fast and thick. This seems like a where there’s smoke there is fire and I expect that a beat reporter will confirm in the near term. [Please note: I am NOT confirming a callup in this piece currently.]

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David 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.

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I think Matt Carpenter is a great prospect. Personally, I think he’s poised to take the starting 3B job from David Freese either during 2011 or by 2012. That said, I think he belongs in Memphis to start 2011.

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Put on your optimistic hats!  Matt Carpenter had a banner year in 2010 at Springfield and the consensus, for all intents and purposes, expects him to repeat those results at Memphis in 2011. Numbers after the jump.

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Springfield scribe Kary Booher ran a piece on Matt Carpenter last week who is the pet prospect du jour of late.  I remain intrigued by Carpenter and while I’m likely shouting into the echo chamber here, I’d like to do a community projection for him.

In the comments, please leave the following statistics — in a comma delimitted format preferably — assuming Carpenter spends the full season in Memphis:

ABs,Hits,Doubles,Triples,HRs,BBs,Ks

I’ll compile any comments with these stats and come up and post the results on Friday.  Anything before Thursday at 6pm will get counted.

After having seen Matt Carpenter in Springfield a couple weeks ago, I found myself questioning what the Cardinals have created for themselves in the selection of Zack Cox overall. I think they’ll have created a situation that is much to their advantage.

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