I love Carp. Have from the moment the M's acquired him. He can hit. Again, he probably won't hit .310...but he's going to ring up a whole bunch of .280-.360 years. I thought he should have been the fulltime DH last year...and the 1B before Smoak came on board. The Kotchman deal was absurd considering you already had a much better bat (WAY better) in Carp. Z was in love with a glove, on that deal. Imagine, in love with a 1B glove.
The guy is a pro, and when needed, he modified his swing and bombed away last year...and still had that nice eye.
Some have said that he plays a passable LF, too. Well...not abysmal. Holy cow, Willie Stargell played LF. Carp can manage out there.
Consider: Saunders bat doesn't turn up. Milton's control button doesn't either. Could you live with shakey routes but a .280-.360-.460 & 18 homers in left field? Man, I could. I think Carp has that.
The guy can hit, I say. And if the worst offensive team on the planet can't find a place for a guy who can hit, then everybody in the organization is fielding % drunk!
Earl Weaver would let Carp marry is daughter. And give him 450 PA's. Well if he hadn't had the Boog and Eddie, he would have.
Free Carp!
moe
I've said before that he is Cust light (no pun intended...well, mostly not intended). I've even said that signing Cust for only one year was stupid because you already had Cust light.
This guy can hit. 120+ OPS Doc? Right on!
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SSI CRUNCH: Jack Zduriencik evidently traded for Carp because he felt Carp had "it," the state of mind that pushes a prospect through the pack. (It wasn't glittering numbers, fo sho.)
From the first AB that Dr. D saw Mike Carp, he was convinced. Of Carp's attitude and disposition, that is. This is a man who is not phased by bad counts, and not phased by better players.
HQ seems to have nailed another one, that Carp will put up some 400-AB seasons in the 120 OPS+ range as a platoon player.
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COMP: Tino Martinez was a better player than Carp, but he reminds me.
Tino was also a big strong kid, stiff mechanical movements, whose swing was fairly static and lifeless.
But Tino also had the nice feel for the pitcher-hitter battle, and he did learn to get his pitch and pull it those 380 feet ...
In 1977, Mike Carp would have hit sixth for the M's and knocked in 82 runs. He'd have been one of their better players ... come to think of it, he'd have been one of the better players for the 2010 Mariners, also.
Timewarped out of the Kingdoom into the emerald downs of Safeco, he could still become a Platoon Tino. If Jack Cust runs through an outfield fence and is killed The Natural style, or if Cust can't decide whether to hit his way or the A's way, Carp could be a factor in 2011.
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SSI Sez: Amazing that, with Mike Carp available, that the Mariners chose to acquire Jack Cust rather than to deploy Carp.
Amazing in the good sense: The choice of Cust over Mike Carp is, to the discerning MC denizen, a clear "tell" that Jack Zduriencik is trying to keep open his options of not being chum for the AL shark tank in 2011.
When a team is down, the locals want them to punt the season, to call "Uncle," to call a press conference and apologize and "rebuild the team right."
Jack Cust is not rebuilding a team right. Not in the language of 'net rats. But if the M's get Pineda and Bedard rolling, and surprise some people, it will be because of a lot of Cust-type decisions.
You go Capt. Jack. No point in punting 2011. It isn't fourth down.
Comments
I'm not good at formatting, so this will have to run down the screen
Carp 09 vs. 10
G 110-110
AB 413-409
R 66-67
H 112-105
2B 25-17
3B 1-1
HR 15-29
XBH 41-47
BB 58-41
K 99-93
BA .271-.257
OBP .372-.328
SLG .446-.516
OPS .818-.844
It's really amazing how much stayed exactly the same, but a dozen doubles turned into homers, and he lost 17 walks.
Net outcome, OBP a lot less shiny, but OPS went up.
At 25, he still has time, but he seems to still be figuring it out. Carp 2.0 still doesn't quite do it for me (41 walks/.328 OBP in AAA from his type of player -- as in: no speed/no defense -- doesn't jazz me much), but Carp 3.0 could be exciting. 60ish walks and 20+ HR would be a nice median (he's yet to do both in the same year), and then, yeah, I would say he's a contributor at 1b/DH.
Sieze the Carp!
I actually mentioned Carp as a possible grab when Putz was still a Mariner. So, I've been hoping for his success for quite awhile. I think the club knew before 2010 that Carp wasn't quite ready to move up, which is why they went and got Kotchman. I think it's pretty obvious they tweaked his approach, (fewer walks, more HRs), and I think success would've been unattainable if tweaking his approach WHILE facing MLB pitchers on a daily basis.
As for the positional thing ... the club has a vaccuum of expectation for BOTH 1B and DH in 2011. While hope is high with Smoak, there is no track-record of performance to create a reliable expectation. And with MB's volatility, DH remains a mystery slot.
When you have uncertain production - the best cover is to try and create multiple layers of it, in hopes that even if some slices fail, others will succeed.
Earl Weaver would let Carp marry his daughter. And give him 450 PA's. Well if he hadn't had the Boog and Eddie, he would have. Free Carp!
LOL! :cpoints:
I actually mentioned Carp as a possible grab when Putz was still a Mariner.
Remember that. Carp ever knocks in 90, he's all you :- )
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So, I've been hoping for his success for quite awhile. I think the club knew before 2010 that Carp wasn't quite ready to move up, which is why they went and got Kotchman. I think it's pretty obvious they tweaked his approach, (fewer walks, more HRs), and I think success would've been unattainable if tweaking his approach WHILE facing MLB pitchers on a daily basis.
And if so, that would well-and-truly come out of the Earl playbook. IIRC he gives Ken Singleton as an example where he went, "Look to hit those 2-0 and 3-1 pitches out of the ballpark," and transformed Singleton's career.
If they actually managed Carp in the way you detail, including the AAA time to work the kinks, that would qualify in SSI's world as coaching that made a difference.
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Which would then make the Cust decision the more interesting in its win-now impetus.
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What is your current expectation for Carp's career there, San?
Such as a certain HOF right fielder around here.
Sometimes a hitter needs more aggressiveness. Not often, but sometimes.
The 1B/DH situation should *ALWAYS* be looked at as a 2-position consideration. And I think Z might be a wee bit fearful of repeating the '09/'10 error he made in regard to 1B/DH, (even though he "got away with it" in 2009).
In 2009, when Z "signed" Branyan - the take was Russell was going to be a complimentary player, probably getting the larger chunk of a platoon with Sweeney at 1B. (Of course, this fantasy also included dreams of Junior patrolling LF for 80 games).
The club went into 2009 with Endy Chavez as the LF (Wlad in waiting), so it became Branyan, Griffey and Sweeney swapping 3 bodies through 2 slots. That was the "plan" - and it's what eventually played out ... EXCEPT, Sweeney couldn't play first and Griffey couldn't play OF. By year end, Carp was 2nd in games played at 1B (15) with Lopez?!? next (12). Griffey and Sweeney ended up splitting 148 games at DH.
The double-geezer DH worked "well enough" in 2009 -- but it SERIOUSLY forced the team's hand in regard to PT at 1B. I said at the time - in a "rebuilding year" that wasn't a horrible choice, since Carp wasn't ready. But, when Branyan demanded 2 years and they let him walk, the 2010 plan became: Kotchman, Griffey, Sweeney. Bradley was intended to be "mostly" a LF, but could add some DH.
What happened? Kotchman played 108 games, Smoak (not an M until mid-season) played 25, and Carp 9. For *TWO* seasons, the club actually entered the year with *NO* backup plan for 1B, and a plan to split DH between players incapable of playing the position of DH fulltime.
For 2011, Smoak is the obvious starter at 1B, and Cust becomes the lead guy for DH. But, Bradley is certainly not MORE likely to play 100 games this year than last. IMO, Carp becomes the FIRST guy in 3 years that actually has a reasonable shot at backing up both 1B and DH for more than 30 games. I think if Bradley were to jump up and be productive for 130 games, it is likely most of them would be in LF.
I've always viewed Carp as a likely .800 MLB hitter, with ZERO numbers of note ... a meh .260-.270 BA ... a meh .350ish OBP ... a meh .450ish slugging average ... a meh mid-20s HR total. The kind of guy that is more valuable than almost every hitter on the roster, but who everyone complains about because he doesn't do any one thing exceptional.
I think he's a likely platoon candidate early in his career, who will likely need a 'lucky' injury to somebody else in order to get enough MLB ABs versus lefties to adapt and pull a Branyan. Since I think one of Carp's strengths IS adaptability, what I suspect is a career similar to Branyan's, where he's likely to get stuck as a platoonee, and eventually get good enough at the role to have a long, but indistinguished career. I think he's better than Langerhans, but could suffer the same fate.
What I *HOPE* is that Carp gets a chance to get 400 ABs between 1B and DH this year and that he succeeds. If so, it will be the FIRST sign of actual player development in Seattle in the last decade.
This year will be big for Carp. If hes 'meh' again at AAA, hes probably more of a depth piece than a prospect. It'll be his 3rd season in AAA, so he pretty has to start destroying it to remain a prospect.
Its wierd after he looked so good in his debut. The line between AAAA and MLB regular is razor thin.