[O.city]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

When you're constantly taking the first 3 pitches and refuse to do anything other than hit the ball into the teeth of the shift because you're the most predictable at-bat in baseball, that's not bad luck.

Carpenter has an .069 BA with a 3 ball count. He has an .068 BA with a 2 strike count (and a shocking .265 OPS). He is, objectively, a terrible hitter late in counts right now. And yet he keeps going up there and taking passive approaches while letting pitchers dictate to him how the AB is gonna go.

When they can get ahead in the count on you or even stay even to two strikes, they're going to throw the ball where they want to throw it and they're going to set you up to hit it exactly where they want you to hit it in the process.

This isn't bad luck, regardless of how badly Girsch and Mabry want you to believe it. And that whole 'keep doing what you're doing' thing came from their conversation as relayed by Carpenter, who is objectively stupid. Carpenter probably only understood half of what he heard anyway and used it as a perfect opportunity for confirmation bias.

This isn't bad luck - it's abysmally bad offense. Carpenter's not going to just snap out of this because he wants to. Pitchers simply do not fear him because he's given them no reason to. He's as predictable as the sunrise so they know exactly how to handle him. And they're going to continue to do so. The dude is swinging at less than half the pitches he sees in the strike zone. That's unbelievable. He's such a comfortable at-bat for pitchers because they can command the entire process. A lot of pitchers hate the shift because they can't throw to certain parts of the zone without the shift biting them in the ass. With Carpenter it doesn't matter - shift him into RF and then throw him a pitch on the outer 1/3...who cares? He's not gonna swing at it anyway. Get your free strike and set up the AB to eventually throw him inside and have him 'make hard contact' right where someone's standing. Because that's where you put them.

You can continue to parrot the company line regarding tough luck and poor strike zones (though his zone is similar to most lefties and not as bad as someone like Jose Ramirez, who's still hitting because he's not a 1-trick pony), but his zone is the same as it's been for 3 years. Time to stop bitching about it and do something.

But him and Matheny lack the combined processing power for simple addition so I wouldn't expect anything revolutionary. Sadly, it won't matter either way. Matheny only knows accountability as it relates to non Mike Guys so Carpenter will be out there killing rallies day after day after day. But fortunately he's an aces defender so we'll keep him out there for the leather...

Inevitably, probably so.