This article is part of our Collette Calls series.
He is not Bryce Harper. He is not Mike Trout. He is not Nolan Arenado.
He is Chris "Trogdor" Carter of the Milwaukee Brewers (image via Crawfish Boxes):
Carter was inked by the Brewers in the offseason for $2 million because seemingly no American League team had room at the DH position for him (I'm looking at you, Tampa Bay). Heading into the 2016 season, Carter had firmly established himself as a three true-outcome player in that he was going to hit home runs, walk, or strike out. He had a .221/.313/.465 slash line with an 11.4-percent walk rate and a 33.1-percent strikeout rate and had hit 119 home runs in 2114 plate appearances.
Any time a player has the power potential and can do this (just listen to his bat crushing the ball), teams are going to do what they can to fix his flaws.
The A's tried a few things with Carter, as did the Astros, but Carter still found himself being non-tendered by Houston after the
He is not Bryce Harper. He is not Mike Trout. He is not Nolan Arenado.
He is Chris "Trogdor" Carter of the Milwaukee Brewers (image via Crawfish Boxes):
Carter was inked by the Brewers in the offseason for $2 million because seemingly no American League team had room at the DH position for him (I'm looking at you, Tampa Bay). Heading into the 2016 season, Carter had firmly established himself as a three true-outcome player in that he was going to hit home runs, walk, or strike out. He had a .221/.313/.465 slash line with an 11.4-percent walk rate and a 33.1-percent strikeout rate and had hit 119 home runs in 2114 plate appearances.
Any time a player has the power potential and can do this (just listen to his bat crushing the ball), teams are going to do what they can to fix his flaws.
The A's tried a few things with Carter, as did the Astros, but Carter still found himself being non-tendered by Houston after the season. Last year, despite the work done by the Astros in 2014, Carter regressed and finished below the Mendoza line for the first time in his full-season career and the Astros decided to go younger with Tyler White and eventually A.J. Reed rather than keep Carter for another season.
Houston's loss has been Milwaukee's gain. Side not: imagine if the Astros had retained both Carter and Vincent Velasquez this offseason rather than moving them. I digress ...
When a guy has a strikeout rate like Carter has, we tend to think of them as a free swinger with no plate discipline. That's not the case for Carter. Heading into the 2016 season, Carter's career out-of-zone swing rate was 25.6 percent compared to a league average of 28.5 percent during the same period. The main issue for Carter is that when he swings, he tends to come up empty more than most.
| STAT | CARTER | MLB |
| Contact% | 63.3 | 78.1 |
| Out of Zone Swing% | 25.6 | 28.5 |
| Swinging Strike% | 16.8 | 10.1 |
Carter ends up missing a lot of pitches within the strike zone. While the league average for contact within the strike zone is in the mid-to-upper 80s, Carter has lived in the mid-70s, until this season.
| SEASON | CARTER | MLB |
| 2010 | 78.0% | 88.1% |
| 2011 | 60.5% | 87.9% |
| 2012 | 74.8% | 87.2% |
| 2013 | 77.1% | 87.0% |
| 2014 | 76.9% | 87.3% |
| 2015 | 75.2% | 86.7% |
| 2016 | 81.4% | 85.9% |
While he's still below the league average, he's closer to it this season than he has ever been before. If we go back to the work the Astros did with Carter, they started with shortening his swing. When a batter has a long swing, they're going to have trouble catching up to velocity or stuff on the inner half of the plate. Last season, Carter still had issues against fastballs as he worked through the changes, but this season he is squaring up fastballs at a rate we haven't seen since the small sample size of his rookie season.
| SEASON | CONTACT% | SWING-STRIKE% |
| 2012 | 72.0 | 12.3 |
| 2013 | 67.9 | 14.8 |
| 2014 | 70.1 | 14.3 |
| 2015 | 67.8 | 14.1 |
| 2016 | 76.4 | 9.6 |
Seven of the 10 homers that Carter has to date have come off the fastball as opposed to only 12 of 24 last year. Also, his batted ball outcomes against the fastball are excellent this season after slowly declining over the previous few campaigns:
| SEASON | PITCHES | AVG | SLG | ISO | BABIP |
| 2012 | 632 | .293 | .659 | .366 | .338 |
| 2013 | 1,409 | .261 | .574 | .313 | .314 |
| 2014 | 1,359 | .228 | .547 | .319 | .219 |
| 2015 | 1,197 | .176 | .366 | .190 | .209 |
| 2016 | 271 | .317 | .746 | .429 | .326 |
The improvement in handling fastballs is what's fueling the nice start to the 2016 season for Carter. We know this because his performance against not-fastballs is right in line with his career numbers. Furthermore, his contact levels and swinging strike rates on non-fastballs are right in line with previous seasons.
| SEASON | CONTACT% | SWING-STRIKE% |
| 2012 | 55.2 | 18.4 |
| 2013 | 54.7 | 19.7 |
| 2014 | 53.1 | 23.0 |
| 2015 | 54.5 | 22.5 |
| 2016 | 53.4 | 19.4 |
Over his career, Carter has hit .201 against non-fastballs with a .380 slugging percentage and this season, he is hitting .206 against those pitches and slugging .500 which is in line with previous outcomes.
| SEASON | PITCHES | AVG | SLG | ISO | BABIP |
| 2012 | 473 | .168 | .326 | .158 | .235 |
| 2013 | 1,038 | .178 | .297 | .119 | .312 |
| 2014 | 920 | .219 | .393 | .174 | .350 |
| 2015 | 734 | .228 | .503 | .275 | .292 |
| 2016 | 175 | .206 | .500 | .294 | .235 |
Carter isn't hitting offspeed pitches any better in terms of average than he has in the past, but of late, he is hitting them harder. He has talked about waiting back on pitches versus lunging for them, and doing so has allowed him to hit the offspeed pitches harder, albeit not always safely in play. Finding video of Carter staying back on offspeed stuff is tough, but I was able to find side-angle video of him lunging at a pitch that he knocked out of the park, as well as one this year with the Brewers that he stayed back on to hit a frozen rope out to center field. Jump to the 38-second mark of this video from 2012 and this one from 2016 to see the difference. Here are still images of the moments side by side:
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In summary, Chris Carter cost Milwaukee next to nothing to roster, and he's crushing it out of the gate this season. He likely cost owners little to roster in drafts in March and is helping them tremendously so far. Carter is no stranger to hot streaks and this recent run of 162 plate appearances has been fun to watch for those of us that love the big guy, but it's just that -- 162 plate appearances. He's made some process changes, but has also done this in the past when it seemed to work for a bit before opposing pitchers adjusted, causing Carter to slump. Perhaps this time he can avoid the extreme slumps of seasons past and reach the 40-homer potential thatAdam McCalvy of MLB.com saw in him before the season started.
