Collette Calls: Whiffing on Carpenter

Every year, I make two appearances on the BaseballHQ podcast hosted by Patrick Davitt. I enjoy his show because he lets the guest do most of the talking and asks solid questions. One feature of his podcast that I enjoy is when he asks the guest to pick a hitter and a pitcher to pick up from each league as well as one to drop from each one in his "Boons and Banes" section. I was on the June 22 episode (linked above) and had this to say about the pitcher I chose as my NL boon, Jon Lester:

"Lester has stranded every single baserunner that has reached base in the month of June. He has allowed two runs – both solo home runs – but other than that, he has stranded everyone. He has five straight wins and has won 9 of his 15 decisions. To me, this screams 1989 (1990) Jack Armstrong…everything has gone his way despite when you look at some of the other stuff. This foundation is not going to last. To me, Jon Lester is Jack Armstrong and I am putting them in the same class and I would be trying to sell Lester off if he was my staff ace right now because that is not going to last the summer."

These were Lester's numbers on the season compared to his career rates when I suggested trading him:

His numbers since my advice on June 20 have been a lesson in regression to the mean:

The updated StatCast data shows a 48-point split for Lester with a .310 xwOBA and a .358 xwOBA, showing that there still could be bad days ahead. That split is the highest amongst the four Cubs pitchers with at least 50 innings pitched this season, so while the team defense is good, he has clearly enjoyed the highest benefits from it:

This article is far from a victory lap, because the rest of this article refers to Jobs's quote about not letting the noise of other people's opinions drown out your own inner voice. My noise about Matt Carpenter in May drowned out the inner voice of at least one Twitter follower/subscriber/podcast listener, and for that, I am so sorry.

On that particular particular podcast episode (Episode 544, 50 minutes in), I had the following to say about Carpenter:

Paul [Sporer] said people were hitting him up in his chat the other day asking, "OMG, where is Matt Carpenter's power these days. To that, I want to say thank you to those who listened to this podcast because I … we talked way too much about this subject over the winter. Every time I said to avoid Matt Carpenter and that it is going to be a problem. Guys coming off shoulder problems, and remember, he didn't have surgery on his issue. I said it back then – red flag for me. Pass, pass hard. [Quoted his stats through April and told the story about how Matt Carpenter got a golf cart the year Adam Wainwright bet him about hitting homers.] I was not a fan of Carpenter coming into the season. Shoulder problems are a red flag for me. Shoulder problems that are not surgically corrected are a bigger red flag for me because those things tend to not go away. They eventually need them, and I speak from experience as a guy who has had three shoulder surgeries in the past 15 years, and the most recent one still feels like crap. This is why I am still down on him. If you have him and you think he is going to hit 20 homers this year because he has done it each of the past three seasons, you need to make alternative plans.

Justin: Would you drop him in a 15-team league?

Me: Depends on who is available.

Justin:C.J. Cron?

Me: Yes.

Justin:Mark Canha.

Me: Yea, I would pick him up right now too.

Justin:Dixon Machado.

Me: No.

Justin: NL Only – Carlos Asauje.

Me: No, playing time is crowded.

Justin:Matt Adams?

Me: Yea, I would drop Matt Carpenter for Matt Adams.

Justin: I would keep Carpenter over Adams in NL-only, but we're getting to that point where it is tough [quotes stats] … sometimes it is OK to sell low.

Me: If you're trying to buy low, you have to figure out where the high is going to come from [digging into StatCast data … chatter]. Go and look into the StatCast data and look for the positive, but how much digging do you have to do?

Justin: quoting stats that are down across the board … I would be more than happy to sell at 50 cents on the dollar.

Me: [Pulls up his StatCast data.] Site won't load. Screw it, dump Matt Carpenter. I gave you enough reasons. The trouble is still there. If he comes back and has a better season, come back and shove it in my face. I'm more than willing to own up to my mistakes if I gave you bad advice. I'm telling you here, this is solid advice from personal experience with shoulder problems. Avoid like the clap.

Me: [StatCast finally loads.] His wOBA is .404, but his xwOBA is .279 right now. This reminds me a lot of Brad Miller in 2017, who eventually had a core muscle problem. Came off a big power year, couldn't hit for power and started walking a bunch. Carpenter now doing the same … I know it is tough to give up on a name like that, but it isn't looking good. Looking at his radial chart, the contact is better than that. Eight barrels, seven solid contacts … houlder issues hurt your extension on your swing … it is his front shoulder that is giving him trouble. I'm going to be in Camp Pessimistic on this one; if I'm wrong, come back and shove it in my face later.

I will save you the trouble and shove it in my own face. I was so focused on the shoulder problem and the noise of my own opinions that I ignored the data at hand that was staring me right in the face.

First off, I confused the problem during my own statement when I said he had a .265 xwOBA despite all of the walks, when in fact I transposed the numbers in my head. He had a .404 xwOBA when we recorded that episode. I should have known better when I talked about the quality of contact he was making at the time off his radial chart, which is shown below:

At that time, Carpenter had 17 batted ball events classified as Barrels or Solid Contact. That had him tied with Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Ozzie Albies (remember the April version of him?), and Javier Baez, The respective numbers for that quartet at the time against what Carpenter was doing relative to the wOBA-xwOBA on that type of hard contact:

•Jose Ramirez: .453
•Matt Carpenter: .445
•J.D. Martinez: .444
•Mike Trout: .435
•Alex Bregman: .419

Only J.D. Martinez has more batted ball events graded as Barrels or Solid Contact events since my bold proclamation. Carpenter has 58 such events, 29 of each type.

His Launch Angle Charts show that he was indeed struggling to get loft on the ball early on (left), but that issue has been corrected over the past two months (right):

Simply put, this may be the biggest swing and miss of my fantasy writing/talking career. I was as wrong about Carpenter as I was right about Lester. In both cases, the data was there, but in only one case did I let my opinions get in the way of the data and based it on personal experience.

Fantasy baseball is a humbling game, and let my Merkle Boner be a lesson to you to do your complete due diligence with the data before making a final decision on a player. I am hopeful that many people ignored my advice and stuck with Matt Carpenter because I am quite ashamed of my terrible advice in hindsight. As good as I believe I have done this year with my bold prediction series picks, this one giant swing and a miss on Carpenter looms like a dark cloud over my head and I cannot get past it.