Matt Carpenter Was the “Unluckiest” Hitter of 2021

as much as skill plays a part in one's success luck is something not everyone obtains equally this is true for all facets of everyday life but particularly in the baseball world sometimes a little bit of luck goes a long way you may remember this game tying home run from fernando tatis jr which eventually led to a padres win well what you may not remember is on the previous pitch tatis hit a pop-up to the first baseman taylor jones who wasn't able to catch the ball pretty lucky break for tatis and the padres however good luck doesn't last forever and this is certainly the case for matt carpenter certain metrics paint carpenter as the unluckiest hitter of 2021 but i'm putting air quotes around the word unlucky for a reason carpenter is currently a free agent for the first time in his career after spending 10 plus seasons with the cardinals or 11 seasons if you want to count the seven game stint in 2011 but to be honest i'm okay with ignoring a 15 0ps plus season to be fair he bounced back pretty well in his real rookie season this eventually led to his best season in 2013 where he earned his first all-star appearance and his only silver slugger while finishing fourth in mvp voting after this season he earned two more all-star appearances and some mvp votes in a couple other seasons most recently in 2018 however after 2018 it's gone downhill for carpenter and once nolan arenado arrived in saint louis after the 2020 season carpenter lost his starting spot although in 2021 carpenter played more games than his 2019 season in fact he played the same amount of games as fernando tatis jr who finished third in mvp voting however carpenter's 2021 season was basically the complete opposite of tatissa's season his war numbers paint him as a negative asset although to be fair to carpenter he was far from the worst hitter of 2021 with players like jackie bradley jr austin hedges and cody bellinger competing for that title but at least bradley and hedges are great defenders and bellinger came up clutch in the postseason however here's where it gets a bit more interesting among these three batters each player was among the worst in the league in slugging percentage notably with bradley having the worst slugging percentage among players with at least 200 plate appearances now let's add in barrel percentage as a reminder a barreled ball requires an exit velocity of at least 98 miles per hour and a launch angle between 26 and 30 degrees but this number is affected by the exit velocity each one of these players had a barrel rate of less than 10 now let's add in carpenter very similar slugging percentage but a higher barrel rate in fact if carpenter qualified for the amount of batted ball events needed to be on the normal leaderboard he would be sitting with players like freddy freeman brandon crawford and kyle tucker also if we go back to this leaderboard with the lowest slugging percentages in the league you see that most of these players have a barrel percentage under 10 until you get to clint fraser who had a slugging percentage 40 points higher than carpenter but even his barrel percentage is lower than carpenters in fact you have to go all the way down to kyo higashiyoka for a barrel percentage higher than carpenters a player with a slugging percentage over 100 points higher than carpenter although these two players have something in common when comparing slugging percentage and expected slugging percentage these two were very unlucky as carpenter had the league's worst differential between these two stats while higashiyoka was third to get a better perspective of these numbers take a look at this graph the x-axis is expected slugging percentage while the y-axis is slugging percentage basically you want to be as close to the upper right corner as possible here's where higashiyoka is one of the worst spots to be in now let's add in freddy freeman brandon crawford and kyle tucker the players with a similar barrel rates to carpenter these three players are all towards the top right corner now take a guess where carpenter is yeah if carpenter's expected slugging percentage equaled his actual slugging percentage it would have been higher than the league average slugging percentage and when it comes to differences between other normal and expected stats carpenter also led the league in largest batting average difference and woba difference now how do these numbers rank historically well the stack cast era began in 2015 so here's where carpenter's 2021 stat differences rank among all individual seasons since 2015. when it comes to batting average carpenter mainly sits behind 2020 players players who had smaller sample sizes than carpenter in 2021 so if we remove those the only player ahead of carpenter is juan uribe in 2016. as for woba and slugging percentage the only player ahead of carpenter in both set of stats is michael perez from 2020 where he had only 93 played appearances 2020 was just a wild season in general in 2020 five players had negative slugging percentage stat differences over 100 points if we combine every season from the stack cast era excluding 2020 this new total number is also five this applies towards batting average too in 2020 seven players had a negative stat difference of over 50 points every other season only two players so in my opinion removing the 2020 season paints a clearer picture of carpenters 2021 season in the context of the stack cast era something else that's interesting is how many of carpenter's barrels have translated into outs instead of hits here's the list of the top 5 most outs on barreled balls as you'd expect some are luckier than others now let's add in matt carpenter nearly half of the barreled balls carpenter hit into play in 2021 turned into outs interestingly most of these outs are hidden to center field mainly right center field one thing you may not know about carpenter is that he faces the infield shift a lot in fact he's the eighth most shifted player in the league carpenter has been heavily shifted on since 2018 but it reached its peak in 2020 when he led the league in shift percentage given that in 2020 carpenter set career highs and ground ball rate and pull percentage it makes sense why he regressed so much however in 2021 carpenter's ground ball and pull percentages fell significantly almost to career lows instead carpenter's fly ball rate and straightaway percentage rose significantly in particular his fly ball rate was at a career high which explains why carpenter averaged a launch angle over 20 degrees for the first time since 2018 which was his last all-star level season so what's going on well even though carpenter is pulling the ball less often he's still unsuccessful at avoiding the shift also he just strikes out way too much it's certainly not a coincidence that carpenter's strikeout rate has risen as his zone contact rate has heavily declined also in the same time frame carpenter is facing less fastballs than ever going from 64.7 percent of the time in 2018 to as low as 54.3 percent of the time in 2020 however another problem carpenter has is his career low line drive rate he may be hitting the ball into the air more often but hitting line drives is how you beat the shift the other way you beat the shift is hitting the ball to the opposite side of the field like when carpenter got a bunch single for his first hit of 2021 in his 10th game of the year it seems that carpenter has taken an all or nothing type of approach in that he will either hit a home run or strike out trying the problem is that because carpenter is likely to hit fly balls to center field the ball is more likely to be caught on the warning track this is why nearly half of carpenter's barreled balls have been caught in center field honestly this comment on an sb nation article from a few months ago puts it perfectly grounds hard into the shift hits fly balls to the deepest part of the park and a high strikeout rate one way you can see this is with carpenter's exit velocity while his average exit velocity has stayed relatively the same his max exit velocity continues to diminish which tells me that carpenter is losing power as he ages and if you want to see what carpenter's hardest hit ball of 2021 was here it is like that down the right field line gone a home run off the foul pole in other words the shortest possible way to hit a home run this was actually the day after he hit a bunt to get his first hit of the year a few days prior to that carpenter hit his second hardest hit ball of the year and a right center will it carry near the wall and it's caught even when he did everything right from an analytics standpoint he just didn't have the power to get the ball over the fence in short not every barreled ball is created equal carpenter is 36 years old and his days with the cardinals are over he has expressed a desire to play in 2022 which may happen but it may be a while before he finds a new team in short he has simply lost what was once his most valuable trait his power also teams have figured out how to defend against carpenter which only limits his value in terms of expected outcome carpenter's 2021 season was arguably the most unlucky of the stack cast era however in a results-based game expected outcomes don't score runs or win games carpenter's flaws notably his all-or-nothing approach are what ultimately let him down he's had a great career with the cardinals but it's safe to say we've likely seen the best of him i hope you guys enjoyed the video leave a like if you did and subscribe for more content just like this thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: SportStorm

Views: 43,702

Keywords: matt carpenter, mlb, baseball, st louis cardinals, matt carpenter 2021, matt carpenter unlucky, matt carpenter bad, matt carpenter shift, matt carpenter cardinals, sportstorm, mlb stats, mlb unlucky season, most unlucky season ever, st louis cardinals 2021, cardinals 2021, matt carpenter home run

Id: Ui4iNVQBEIA

Length: 10min 47sec (647 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 30 2021