Rob Rains Inside Baseball: Matt Carpenter Won't Win, But He Belongs In MVP Discussion

By Rob Rains

With five weeks remaining in the regular season, it’s about time the talk heats up concerning candidates for the Most Valuable Player award. Four names will be prominent in those discussions in the National League – Yadier Molina of the Cardinals, Andrew McCutchen of the Pirates, Paul Goldschmidt of the Diamondbacks and Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers.

A fifth player whose name will not come up nearly as often as it should in those discussions is that of the Cardinals’ Matt Carpenter.

There is no possibility that Carpenter will win the award, but he does deserve to be in the conversation. Voters fill out a ballot that has 10 spots on it, and if Carpenter is not included somewhere on that list, the voter has not really paid attention to why the Cardinals are tied for first place with 32 games left to play.

Carpenter’s .313 batting average after Sunday’s game ties him for sixth in the NL. He scored his league-leading 97th run on Sunday and his two hits increased his season total to 157, two ahead of Milwaukee’s Jean Segura for the most in the league. He also hit his league-high 43rd double and his total of 58 extra-base hits is tied with Goldschmidt and one behind league-leader Jay Bruce of the Reds.

Even beyond the regular statistics, Carpenter’s value to the Cardinals can be found in the success he has had as the team’s leadoff hitter, where his contribution can be measured in many different ways. The most important one is that when he hits and gets on base, the Cardinals have a much better chance of winning the game.

Since his first game hitting leadoff on April 18 in Philadelphia – ironically the same night Edward Mujica became the Cardinals’ closer and earned his first save – Carpenter has started 104 games in the leadoff spot and in those games, the Cardinals have gone 61-43. He became the regular leadoff hitter on May 2. 

In those 104 games, Carpenter has hit .318, has driven in 56 runs (18 more than any other leadoff hitter in the NL) and has scored 81 runs, just two fewer than league-leader Shin-Soo Choo of the Reds, who has hit leadoff in all but a handful of games this season. Carpenter’s .388 on-base percentage also is second in the league among leadoff hitters, behind Choo.

One of the major differences in evaluating Carpenter’s performance, however, when compared to the other top hitters in the league is one simple truism – those players are all doing basically what they were projected to do coming into the season.

Molina has had a terrific season, and his true value was best shown in the two weeks he didn’t play because of his sore right knee – the kind of example the NFL experts used in declaring that Peyton Manning should have won the MVP the year he didn’t play for Indianapolis and the Colts won one game.

Nobody, however - on the Cardinals or around baseball - had any idea that Carpenter would have the kind of success he has had this season seven months ago. He had certainly had a good rookie season in 2012, hitting .294, but he also had only 294 at-bats and had never played regularly in the majors.

When this season began, Carpenter was being asked to take over a new position, second base, and two weeks into the season, was moved into the leadoff role because the Cardinals were struggling there as well. They are not struggling at either spot anymore.

A veteran scout who regularly follows the Cardinals admits that he was one of those who truly undervalued Carpenter’s ability early in the season, especially the way he has demonstrated that he can grind out at-bats, change his approach to meet the needs of each at-bat and deliver hit after hit with two strikes.

And that’s where Carpenter’s name should come up in the discussions for the middle spots on the MVP ballot, where the talk should not be of raw numbers but of the value a player has contributed to his team.

This debate comes up in the MVP discussion every year – how do you accurately define, and gauge, value?

Another sign of Carpenter’s value to the Cardinals was that Sunday’s loss to the Braves was only the eighth time this season they have lost a game in which Carpenter had two or more hits and scored one or more runs. Their record in those games is now 30-8.

In games in which Carpenter does not get two or more hits and does not score a run, the Cardinals’ record is 33-39.

“He’s certainly been one of the team’s MVPs,” said pitcher Adam Wainwright. “He’s setting the table every day. So many times when you pitch against a team that has a great leadoff hitter, it makes it tough from the very first pitch of the game until the end. It seems like you’ve got the 1-2-3 hitters coming up every time.” [To Continue Reading... http://www.robrains.com/CARDINALSBASEBALL/tabid/91/entryid/709/matt-carpenter-wont-win-but-he-belongs-in-mvp-discussion.aspx ]

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Rob Rains is the editor of StLSportsPage.com, for breaking St. Louis sports news, features,and articles, check it out.
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