11:52am: Carpenter will be guaranteed $12MM on the contract, tweets Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. That figure presumably encompasses both his 2023 salary and a likely buyout on the 2024 option. Rosenthal notes that the deal can max out at $21MM over two years, but Carpenter would need to exercise the player option and reach a full slate of performance incentives in order to secure that total.
11:34am: The Padres and infielder/outfielder Matt Carpenter are in agreement on a deal for the 2023 season that includes a 2024 player option, reports AJ Cassavell of MLB.com (Twitter link). That’s effectively a two-year pact for Carpenter, who’ll give the Padres a lefty bat to slot in at designated hitter or multiple corner positions.
Carpenter, who turned 37 last month, enjoyed one of the most remarkable rebound campaigns in recent memory in 2022. A three-time All-Star with the Cardinals, Carpenter’s career looked to be on the downswing when he batted a combined .176/. 313/.291 in 418 plate appearances with St. Louis from 2020-21. Last offseason, Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic detailed the manner in which Carpenter reinvented himself, taking a data-driven approach to hitting and enlisting feedback from the likes of Joey Votto, Matt Holliday and a private hitting coach as he revamped his swing and his entire approach at the plate.
We often see stories of veterans making changes late in their careers, but few have found the level of success enjoyed by Carpenter. After hitting .275/.379/.613 in 21 games with the Rangers’ Triple-A affiliate, Carpenter was released by Texas (oops) and signed a Major League deal with the Yankees, for whom he posted a borderline-comical .305 /.412/.727 slash. Carpenter mashed 15 home runs in just 154 plate appearances, and while he was certainly aided to an extent by the dimensions of Yankee Stadium, he still popped six of those round-trippers and batted .253/.333/.506 on the road.
Simply put — and in rather stunning fashion — Carpenter was baseball’s best hitter on a rate basis in 2022 (min. 100 plate appearances). He led all of baseball in slugging percentage, isolated power (slugging minus batting average) and wRC+ (217), ranked second to only Aaron Judge in terms of on-base percentage, and posted the 12th-best batting average of any player in the game. Carpenter’s rate of “barreled” balls (as defined by Statcast) was elite, and his average exit velocity and hard-hit rate both clocked in comfortably north of the league average.
Unfortunately for both Carpenter and the Yankees, the revitalized slugger fouled a ball into his foot in early August, resulting in a fracture that wiped out the remainder of his season and rendered him unavailable for the balance of the regular season. A predictably rusty Carpenter jumped directly back onto the Yankees’ playoff roster but went just 1-for-12 between the ALDS and the ALCS. It wasn’t the finish to the season for which Carpenter had hoped.
More to come.
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