Kerry Carpenter

[Peter Welch]

Kerry Carpenter is slumping lately, possibly related to his hamstring issue.

Carpenter is hitting .195/.225/.403 in 82 PA in the past month.  He has 4 homers in that span, but only 2 walks and 23 K.

Carpenter only has 7 walks in 249 PA on the season.  His walk% is 2.8% (league average 8.3%).  So if Carpenter isn't getting hits he's not helping much because he rarely walks.  Carpenter's career walk % is 6%.  Carpenter's K rate is 20.9% (league average 22.5%) so he's not striking out excessively and actually striking out less than he ever has.  His average exit velocity is still good (91.3 MPH).  His BABIP is .281 is slightly below MLB average (.292) so he's had some bad luck.  Last year his BABIP was .328.

Given he's still hitting the ball hard on average and making decent contact I think Carp should bounce back and start getting the extra-base hits again.  I wish he'd draw more walks, though.

Peter

[Roger King]

Despite Hinch looking like he was going to give Carp more at bats vs LH’s this season, so far he has only had 36.  Unfortunately, he is only hitting .194 in those at bats but I noticed zero walks against LH’s. 

I wonder if subconsciously he thinks he needs to swing away in those situations to prove that he can hit LH’s.  

Obviously, the bulk of his at bats have come against RH’s but I wonder if even there, there’s something going on where subconsciously he wants to stay in the lineup and not be lifted later so feels the need to swing away more often.

Just a thought…

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Detroit Tigers e-mail list" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to detroit-tiger...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/detroit-tigers/LV3PR84MB379280E73B7B906D6C4600139A70A%40LV3PR84MB3792.NAMPRD84.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.