Cardinals: Matt Carpenter and the missing clubhouse communication

With Matt Carpenter seeking help on his swing after his contract with the St. Louis Cardinals had ended, it makes one wonder, what was going on in the Cardinals clubhouse.

After Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic’s recent story regarding Matt Carpenter’s venture across the country to get help with his swing, and Redbird Rants Russ Robinson’s article on connecting Carpenter seeking help to the apparent lack of communication between him and hitting coach Jeff Albert and former manager Mike Shildt, it poses a lot of questions about what was going on in the St. Louis Cardinals clubhouse.

In 2018, Matt Carpenter was having a hitting resurgence going .257/.374/.523 with a career-high 36 home runs. This earned him a contract extension that took him through the 2021 season with a 2022 option that was declined and made him a free agent. The option was declined after a third consecutive season of terrible hitting by Carpenter.

In 2021, he hit .169/.305/.275 with three home runs. Sure, Carpenter lost his job at third base to Nolan Arenado. And Tommy Edman became the regular second baseman. But he wasn’t hitting well enough to warrant a competition for playing time with the two eventual Rawlings Gold Glove winners who happened to be pretty great at getting on base.

There were several moments throughout the past couple of seasons, with injuries and Covid-19 issues, where it would have been great to have him as a viable option to help.

The 2019 season was the first season Jeff Albert was the Cardinals hitting coach.  As has been noted, Albert was brought to the Cardinals for his more analytical approach to hitting. So, what was the disconnect for Carpenter and Albert?

Carpenter told Rosenthal he just “never bought into” analytics.

That was evident to fans pretty quickly. But why wasn’t it addressed sooner? Furthermore, why wasn’t something done sooner?

Albert is still the hitting coach and players are working to understand and implement his changes. Shildt was fired as manager in October and while “philosophical differences” were the only reason given for the dismissal, it is known that Shildt and Albert didn’t see eye-to-eye on hitting.

Shildt obviously did not push the front office’s desire to have a more analytical approach to hitting. While other hitters – Edman, Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt, and Tyler O’Neill, for example – took it upon themselves to learn and implement Albert’s approach, Shildt and Albert obviously didn’t feel a need to press the issue with Carpenter.

Heck, Carpenter didn’t take it upon himself to take analytics seriously until he was no longer contractually with the Cardinals.

This suggests strong issues or strong stubbornness. With both being the likely culprit.

It makes you wonder what the communication was like in the Cardinals clubhouse. While most say it was good, it’s obvious with Carpenter, and even the issues toward the end of the season with relief pitcher Alex Reyes, the communication between coaches, Shildt, and players could have been a lot  a ton better.

Hopefully, the team will be able to do better in the future with Oliver Marmol as the team’s new manager. Marmol is reportedly big on teaching and analytics. Marmol should be able to better view the analytical materials and explain them to the players in order to get the desired performance improvement.

This was apparently a bigger issue than anyone outside the clubhouse knew.

It should be interesting to see what happens next whenever baseball activities can resume under a new collective bargaining agreement. Hopefully sooner rather than later.