Crystal Ball: Mike Carp

oh well

 . . . is a powerfull thing as far as perception goes eh? Thats what I was thinking late in the season when I was at a series at the Safe and watched Mike Carp finally get some consistent playing time at first base. While Carp had to dink around out in leftfield to make room for “franchise talent” Justin Smoak, here he was displaying far better range, agility, and general skill at first than Smoak showed, in my opinion.

Is there anything that Smoak does better than Carp? Not really. He hit better in the minors (especially at the AAA level), has hit a lot better in the majors, and looks like a better fielder too. Not that Smoak is bad over there, just that Carp is better. What’s funny is that you don’t here anybody talking about moving Smoak out to leftfield to make room for Carp. Maybe they should though. Shoot, Smoak isn’t even that much younger – Carp turned 25 in June, Smoak will in December.

If Carp wins that 1B job next spring, he will have earned it.

And granted this was largely for fantasy purposes in terms of who I should keep/drop, the analysis is just as relevant for IRL situations, was Lucas Duda. It was right around the beginning of September when I really started looking at both players head to head—they were putting up similar roto stats as 1B/OF eligible players but I needed to figure out who I would rely on more heavily (I wound up holding onto both, but I thought long and hard about which I’d rather keep if it came to it and who I would rather start if the choice was between the two). At that point, they’d both been essentially seeing every day playing time for about a month and a half, had been getting on base, hitting for average, hitting for power, etc. As they both came up largely in the Mets system, they played in a lot of similar offensive environments early in their minor league careers. Heading into September, Carp’s surface numbers looked a bit better if anything—he’d hit more HR in fewer PAs and was hitting for a higher average, but the deeper I looked, the more I convinced myself to rely on Duda going into September, as he had the edge by virtually every predictive measure. He swung and missed less and walked more—both trends that he had the advantage in during his minor league career as well, and while it took him longer to figure out hitting for power, he’d been on basically a 2.5 year run of solid power hitting as well. His BABIP was also more reasonable. My conclusion was that the two were likely to wind up with fairly similar final season lines, but that Carp would get there by hitting some major regression in September while Duda was likely to continue producing at a similar level, making Duda the better “set and forget” September play. As it turned out, I may have underestimated Carp’s regression, though he likely did have some bad luck in September (.264 BABIP) to make it look worse than it was, but Duda’s final season line turned out considerably better than Carp’s and on the whole looked far less “lucky” overall.

Carp’s biggest problem that I see is his prodigious tendency to swing-and-miss, which plays into both his diminished walk rate and difficulty putting the ball in play. His 13.1 SwStrike% was 12th in the majors among players with at least 300 PAs. There are some players who can get away with a mark like this and remain productive, but almost all have true 70-80 power. You have all or nothing sluggers (Mike Stanton, Mark Reynolds, Carlos Pena, Adam Dunn) and even most of the more well rounded seeming players who get away with it have elite power bats as well (Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz, Ryan Howard). Carp has good power, but not 70 or 80 power like these guys. Otherwise you have some pretty mediocre offensive performers (Miguel Olivo, Chris Heisey, Matt LaPorta, Rick Ankiel, Alfonso Soriano, Aaron Rowand). Its just too easy for major league pitchers to exploit a guy who swings and misses so much, so unless they absolutely crush almost every mistake they see, its very difficult to remain productive at this level.

I see five exceptions to this rule among the 27 players who had SwStrike%’s higher than 12% and at least 300 PAs—Matt Kemp, Corey Hart, Adam Jones, Dan Uggla, and Cameron Maybin (its also worth noting that each of these guys had a lower SwStrike% than Carp, though they were in the same basic territory).

Kemp had an unsustainable career high .380 BABIP, hit a career high 39 HR, had career high 10.7% walk rate by a healthy margin, and has plus speed. Easily the most productive 12%+ SwStrike season for any player in 2011, but also obviously not a good comp for Carp. He does everything else better than Carp and his BABIP is likely just as fluky (he’s a high BABIP guy in general, but .380 would be a historical mark if it could be sustained for a long period of time).

Hart is interesting. His BABIP was a bit high at .323, but not absurd for his career .312 mark. It seems like he managed by swinging at a below average number of pitches outside the zone (His O-Swing% was solidly below the average at 27.3%) which is unusual for a hitter with contact issues like this and not really a strength of Carp’s (35.1%, well above the average). It helped Hart keep his K% from ballooning to much (20.7%, higher than average but respectable) and maintain a solid walk rate. Throw in his average speed with his above average power and BABIP and you have perhaps the most well rounded looking player among these “hackers” that doesn’t have 70+ power (or have an elite power season the way Kemp did). This is probably the model Carp needs to try and follow—if he dropped his O-Swing% to even average he could become a fairly similar hitter to Hart and might even get his SwStrike% and BB% to a more respectable place.

Another interesting case is Adam Jones, who doesn’t walk at all (less than Carp did). Jones somehow managed the feat by posting a respectable 18.3% strikeout rate, which was actually just a touch above the MLB average (and he does this fairly consistently). This is incredibly unusual, and I’d interpret it to mean that a) his contact ability is better than the plate discipline marks bear out, but he swings for the fences early in counts and shortens up later, and b) that his approach probably isn’t correctly tapping his hitting ability and full potential. He also has decent speed. Carp does none of this, so this comp doesn’t really apply, but its interesting.

Finally, Uggla probably doesn’t quite have 70 level power, but he does have excellent power and also posts consistently excellent walk rates. Its well documented how his contact issues and fluctuating BABIPs are often the difference between his decent and his borderline spectacular seasons. His O-Swing% is pretty similar to Hart’s, so this is probably about Carp’s ceiling as a hitter if he can improve in that department but he continues to swing and miss a lot. The positional difference is relevant, but Uggla’s bat would play pretty well at 1B or in a COF spot, it would just mean Carp’s seasons fluctuate between average and very good rather than very good to near elite.

Maybin got away with it by posting a .332 BABIP, which is essentially right in line with his career .331 mark and easily explained by his elite speed and extreme ground ball tendency (GBs turn into hits in play more frequently than fly balls). He rated an 8.3 by Bill James’ speed score, tied for 3rd in the majors (with Brett Gardner) among players with at least 300 PAs behind only Rajai Davis and Jose Reyes.

Aside from Jones, there’s a pretty common theme—no one in 2011 got away with such contact issues the way Carp did unless they had elite power, elite speed, or an above average walk rate (or some combination of the three), and even Jones did it by somehow managing an above average K%.

None of this is to say Carp can’t be an above average hitter, more that despite his solid performance his true talent is pretty modest right now and that his performance in 2011 was likely a bit better than we should expect moving forward unless he finds a way to substantially improve. He needs to learn to shrink his zone a bit, particularly on offspeed pitches. His minor league walk rates were impressive for the most part, but might be a bit misleading. In the low minors with the Mets he likely didn’t have to face quality offspeed offerings, but by the time he reached Triple-A he had the advantage of the PCL, where his power played to monstrous proportions in 2010 and 2011 and his walk rate dipped more into merely average to slightly above territory. Getting back to Duda, you can see the contrast, he had walk rates over 10% every step of the way, even when his power really blossomed and blossomed in much more difficult hitting environments. If I had a choice between the two moving forward, mine would be Duda. He seems like a pretty safe bet to be an average to above average major league hitter, while Carp’s projection seems far more volatile and without any significant additional ceiling.

Just wanted to add—I noticed the LD% argument up there somewhere, and while its true that LD% and BABIP tend to have a strong correlation, the problem is that LD% isn’t really any more predictive than BABIP. They correlate to each other, but not so much to future performance. GB% and FB% tend to both be more stable, especially in proportion to each other, with LD% tending to fluctuate fairly largely in between the two. This makes sense intuitively, the difference between a LD and another batted ball type is a matter of inches, but both GB and FB tendencies have a much larger margin for error based on swing mechanics—guys who uppercut and/or use their lower half more tend to generate loft and backspin while guys who are more top-hand heavy or handsy with their swings in general tend to get on top of the ball more and generate topspin. Either one of these approaches will lead to some line drives, but there’s much less hitters can do mechanically to gear their approach towards line drives (not nothing, mind you, just less).