that Carter will never get his due respect until he hits, and hits consistently at the major league level. Every year people have reasons that he won’t be a star in the majors, even with his production at each level. Last season he hit 39 homeruns, but that was instantly discounted by many because he played in the Cal League. People questioned his ability to hit for a solid average because of his K rate, and rightfully so. However last year was his worst as far as BA is concerned, but the production was still there because of his enormous power. This year he has cut his K rate substantially, while maintaing if not improving his BB rate (don’t have time to look up the exact numbers right now) and the results are there. Obviously nobody expects Carter to continue what he’s done this season at the major league level but I really see no reason not to consider him one of the better OFFENSIVE prospects in the game right now. He’s having a massive season and regardless of the reasons people want to give the production has been there at every stop (career MiLB OPS of .928). He’s not the hitter that he has been this year, but he’s also better then a lot of people on this site give him credit for.

HR is a positive correlate with BABIP. Players who hit home runs tend, for obvious reasons, to hit balls harder, and velocity of batted balls is a tremendously important part of BABIP.

It’s true that reduced home runs tends to mean that the balls that would have been home runs are instead hit very close to the wall (and thus are likely to be XBH anyway), but this effect is more than canceled out by the effect of big-time HR hitters hitting the ball harder.

In any event, though, carping about his decreased HR totals is fairly asinine, as a. Midland is a park which does not yield a lot of home runs, and b. he’s leading the league, or was last time I checked.

Two things:

1. I hope not, and

2. That’s even more annoying a nickname than players usually get.