The Padres added some punch to their roster on Tuesday, reportedly agreeing to a two-year, $12 million deal with a veteran infielder/outfielder. Matt Charpentier. Carpenter, a client of SSG Baseball, can opt out of the contract after the 2023 season by declining a 2024 player option. The contract pays Carpenter a $3 million signing bonus and $3.5 million in salary for the 2023 campaign, and he will have to decide on a $5.5 million player option next winter. He could also earn bonuses of $500,000 for reaching each of the 300, 350, 400, 450, 500 and 550 plate appearances during the two contract seasons.
Carpenter, who turned 37 last month, had one of the most remarkable rebounding campaigns in recent memory this season. A three-time All-Star with the Cardinals, Carpenter appeared to be down when he posted a combined .176/.313/.291 batting line in 418 plate appearances with the St. Louis Cardinals. Louis from 2020-21.
last off-season, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal detailed the way Carpenter reinvented itself, taking a data-driven approach to hitting and getting feedback from people like Joey Votto, Matt Holiday and a private hitting coach as he revamped his swing and his entire approach to home plate. Rangers were intrigued enough to sign him to a minor league contract.
We often see stories of veterans making changes late in their careers, but few have found the level of success that Carpenter enjoyed. After hitting .275/.379/.613 in 21 games with Triple-A affiliate Rangers, Carpenter was released by Texas (oops) and signed a Major League contract with the Yankees, for whom he issued a comic limit .305/ .412/.727 slash. Carpenter smashed 15 homers in just 154 plate appearances, and while he was surely helped to some degree by the size of Yankee Stadium, he still blew six of those homers and hit .253/ .333/.506 on the road.
Simply put — and rather amazingly — Carpenter was baseball’s best hitter by rate 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 Aaron Judge in on-base percentage, and posted the 12th-best average in the stick of any player in the Game. Carpenter’s “barred” ball rate (as defined by Statcast) was elite, and his average speed out and hard hit rate both comfortably reached north of the league average. There’s no realistic way to expect him to maintain that pace, but Carpenter has clearly put himself back on the map as a viable big league puncher.
Unfortunately for the team and the player, the revitalized carpenter faulted his foot in early August, resulting in a broken bone that wiped out the rest of his regular season. Predictably, a Rusty Carpenter returned straight to the Yankees’ playoff roster but only went 1 for 12 with an alarming nine strikeouts between the ALDS and ALCS.
With the Padres, Carpenter is becoming the favorite for DH work, although the Yankees have played him at both inside corner locations and both outside corner positions in 2022. He has also recorded more than 1,900 innings at second base of his career, although defensive measures on his limited work there in 2021 were unsightly to say the least. Still, it could potentially serve as an option there in an emergency.
The Carpenter deal pushes the Padres to more than $246 million in actual payroll for the 2023 season and bumps their luxury tax ledger to nearly $267 million, as screened by Roster Resource. The Padres are already well into the second tier of penalty and, given that they are entering their third straight season on the luxury line, are taxed at a rate of 62% on every second tier dollar ($253 million to $273 million). As such, Carpenter will cost them an additional $3.72 million in taxes for the 2023 campaign.
MLB.com’s AJ Cassavell reported for the first time the two sides had agreed a deal with a 2024 player option. The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported the terms and financial details (Twitter connections).
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