St. Louis Cardinal’s Matt Carpenter: The Turnpike Troubadour

Super utility Horned Frog. Photo courtesy of Mark Halski.

I was recently asked on Twitter to profile the Cardinal’s Matt Carpenter.

My first thought was, “Why is everyone player on the Cardinals have a super vanilla name?” Besides the bland, boring Matt and Matt, Pete, David, Adam, and others, you have the double first named Allen Craig and Jon Jay.

My next thought was, “I wonder what is walk up song is…” Turns out it is Long Hot Summer Days by the Turnpike Troubadours. This is how my brain works when I’m writing a player profile, folks.

Turns out the honky tonk of the Turnpike Troubadours plays to type as the 27-year-old Carpenter was born and raised in Sugar Land, Texas, and went to college at Texas Christian University. He’s a Horned Frog. The lefty batter was drafted in the 13th round in 2009.

Carpenter was likely to make the team this year before injuries took out Rafael Furcal (shocker), at which point he was a lock. His real life value is the fact that he can play all over the diamond as a super-ultility type player. He’s looking great at second this Spring and is likely to begin the season there, batting 7th.

Unfortunately, he projects to have very little, if any, fantasy value. Of the five fantasy tools, he posseses one: a solid batting average. Carpenter’s excellent eye and plate approach puts a solid floor on his average. He’s likely to hit .280+, which isn’t too shabby considering that average is more scare than you might imagine (Here’s a post from last year that talks about average. It’s principles are still relevant for this season).

But outside of his solid average he’ll give you little else. You’ll probably be able to count his stolen bases on one hand and it’s possible you’ll be able to count his homers on two hands. He topped out at 12 homers in the minors and his HR/FB of 7% almost guarantees he’ll never top that in the Majors.

Piling on, his position of 7th in the batting order limits his upside on both runs and RBI. He just won’t rack up enough stats to justify a roster spot except on the deepest of fantasy baseball leagues, even at a very shallow second base position.

Speaking of positions, he’ll likely have fantasy eligibility at multiple positions that does open up and opportunity to use him as a short-term sub if you have a guy hit the DL.

One exception would be OBP leagues. He’ll get on base at a .350 clip minimum, which puts him above the MLB average for that statistic. Otherwise, he’s as vanilla as his name, providing excellent real life utility, but little fantasy oomph.