Chris Carpenter’s Lost Seasons

Chris Carpenter is once again, out for the season.  This year will be the second time in Carpenter’s career that he failed to make a single appearance for an entire season.  He also has two other years in which he did not pitch more than 15.1 innings, and then not including his first season in 1997, he had another season in which he did not reach 75 innings.  All of these hiccups along his career have been due to injuries.  Carpenter has had multiple surgeries on his elbow, shoulder, and now he will have an operation to relieve the tension put on the nerves that supply his right arm with sensation and strength to his muscles.  As a fan, the loss of Carpenter is frustrating for the chances for this season, but for Carpenter, this is an all too familiar routine of watching his teammates play as he works with the training staff in hopes that he will be able to pitch once again for however long his health will last.

It is impossible to look back at Carpenter’s career and not think about what could have been.  He has a career winning percentage over .600 which ranks in the top 100 pitchers of all time and to give a comparison is right around Greg Maddux territory.  That winning percentage has gone up significantly due to his time in St. Louis, where he has a winning percentage that is approaching .700.  It is simply amazing what this guy has done when he has been able to stay healthy enough to pitch.  Yet still, even though the percentages seem to suggest that the sky-rocketing win totals, in 14 major league seasons, carpenter has “only” 144 wins. 

In Carpenters average season over 162 games of health, he would be 14 and 9 with 169 strikeouts in 222 innings.  If he had his average season every year and did not have to sit out a whole or part of a season, Carpenter would already have 210 wins and 2535 strikeouts.  Numbers like this would have us already talking about Chris Carpenter as a future Hall-of-Famer with more years to add to that resume.  These projections are using his averages, though.  What if he had simply been able to stay healthy as a St. Louis Cardinal at the pace that he has set for himself during his time in St. Louis.  In this, what was supposed to be his 9^th season as a Cardinal, Carpenter already has 95 wins wearing the birds on the bat.  In seasons in which Carpenter has been able to make at least 28 starts, he has averaged nearly 16 wins.  If you projected Carpenters career statistics with this in mind he would have 226 wins going into this season.  The bottom line is that with a resume including these win totals, peripheral statistics, postseason highlights, and Cy Young Award voting, Carpenter is looking at a Hall of Fame type career.

And then there is last season, or more appropriately, last postseason where Carpenter worked his patched-together arm so hard that we now see some of the effects.  Carpenter dominated the Houston Astros on the last game of the regular season to ensure at least a tie, and then he pitched on 3 days rest on two separate occasions, including game 7 of the World Series.  Whenever the Cardinals needed someone to step up, there was Carpenter, taking the ball and pitching his butt off.  He very well may have sacrificed another season of his career to will the Cardinals to a World Series title, and he did it without any complaints.  I am sure if you asked him, he would do it all over again.  Carpenter has been nothing but solid in the postseason in his career, with a record of 9 and 2 in the postseason including a 3-0 record with a 2.00 ERA in the World Series.  These games when big time pitchers are called on to carry a team, Carpenter has always shouldered the load.  Unfortunately, this shoulder has all too regularly failed him.  I can only wish him the best and hope to see him back next season to pitch brilliantly once again.