St. Louis Cardinals: Matt Carpenter mercifully goes to the IL

The third baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals has been struggling mightily for the entire season. Could his trip to the IL give him a chance to reset?

This season’s iteration of Matt Carpenter is not the player that the St. Louis Cardinals expected to see when they signed the 33-year-old third baseman to a two year/$39M extension that’s going to last until at least the 2021 season.

So far this year, Carpenter has been hitting just .215 and is getting on-base at just a .321 clip. His career .373 OBP is likely unattainable no matter how he finishes the year. Digging deeper into the statistics, Marp is at just 10 homers on the year after hitting 36 last year; his last homer was all the way back on June 17th and he has just two since the start of June.

Last year, Carpenter was horrible in the first and last months of last season, but in between, he was more or less the best player in the entire MLB. Another thing that made Carpenter’s year last year seem like a fluke was that during the first month or so of the season, his peripheral stats (BABIP, exit velocity) all said that a breakout was coming. This year, there are no such stats.

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There’s no more reason to dig into just how bad Carpenter has been this year, and while the long term outlook of the contract extension he signed is in question right now, it doesn’t affect the rest of this year. Unfortunately for the struggling lefty, he fouled a pitch off his right foot and it was bad enough that he was put on the 10-day IL. I say mercifully in the title because it really is sad to see a player who was so consistent perform so horribly this year.

In his absence, the Cardinals called up Edmundo Sosa from AAA. This is not Sosa’s first time up with the big league club as he appeared in 3 games last year, but his .252 average and .728 OPS at AAA this year paired with his stellar defense at multiple infield positions puts him in a good spot to be a late-inning defensive replacement or a late pinch hitter.

It’s not as much about Sosa as he will be just fine and his presence will allow Yairo Munoz to be freed up to participate more.

The biggest part of this is getting Carpenter as close to his career performance as possible. Being an aware player, Carpenter has likely heard the boo birds that are starting to find him during home games. No player likes playing poorly and it seems like Carpenter is going to take this time to try and get himself right in the minors.

To me, this is Carpenter realizing that he might be better off the rest of the season if he just takes some time to get medically cleared and go on a rehab assignment in the Minors where he can just get a different coach in his ear and try to find his swing.

This is great to hear as the MLB team can’t afford to keep letting Carpenter struggle to find his swing while the team struggles throughout the lineup.

Matt Carpenter’s contract has a full no-trade clause so the best thing to do is allow him to do whatever he needs to figure his swing out. AA or AAA can be a great place for him to do that. In the meantime, Tommy Edman or Munoz will fill in fine at third base.