Sports on Earth

The St. Louis Cardinals sometime second baseman, sometime third baseman, has one of the more interesting skills in baseball.

Famed for his refusal to wear batting gloves, swaying batting stance, and effectiveness despite average tools, Carpenter is one of the only players in baseball history to change his entire approach and remain exactly as productive — just in a different way.

In 2013, Carpenter burst onto the Major League scene. In just his second full season in the the show, he produced 6.9 WAR, 142 wRC+, and won the silver slugger award for NL second baseman.

All of this occurred while Carpenter only hit 11 home runs — 13th out of the 17 qualified second baseman that season. How can an athlete who doesn’t hit home runs be the silver slugger? Through patience, and very careful discipline.

There is a strong correlation between a low Swing% and being productive. In the last five seasons, no player with the lowest rate in the majors has failed to reach 4.0 WAR (rounding up Matt Carpenter’s 3.9 in 2014), while only one player has had the highest and even reached 1.5 (Pablo Sandoval). Since 2002, when Swing% began being used, only one player has had a rate above 50% and lead the majors in WAR (Josh Hamilton, 2010).

In 2013, Carpenter swung at just 37.1% of all pitches he saw — the lowest rate in the majors. At the same time, he saw one of the highest zone % (the rate that pitches end up in the strike zone) in the majors at 45.3%. Those two numbers suggest he should be striking out a ton, but his 13.7% strike out rate was actually below league average, thanks to an insanely low 4.1% swinging strike rate.

The numbers show Carpenter’s patience in 2013. He only swung when it counted, which allowed a .318 batting average and a .392 On Base Percentage.

Fast forward through a down, yet still productive 2014, where Carpenter began working with teammate Matt Holiday to change his approach. In the following season, Carpenter raised his swing rate to hit 28 home runs and improved his ISO by .070. These changes had commentators praising the new Matt Carpenter — but did he really get better, or did he just become more like Matt Holiday?

By both wRC+ and fWAR 2015, Carpenter is actually worse than his 2013 counterpart. His average, OBP, wOBA, and BABIp decreased significantly. In 2015, his only improvements were in power-based statistics like slugging percentage and ISO. It seemed like Carpenter changed for the worse in nearly every way. However, he still produced an all-star caliber season.

Carpenter did the unexpected, and maybe even impossible. A batter who doesn’t walk will strike out more if you ask them to work deeper counts. In this case, we saw a total overhauling.

It’s hard to say exactly which way Carpenter will go in the upcoming season, but it doesn’t really matter. Production is production, and no one knows that better than Matt Carpenter.