A crimson baptism awaits you, Mr. Carpenter.
What do you mean? Am I in danger?
You could be.
Dear God. I'm just a simple baseball player. All I want to is to be treated fairly and to play the game I love.
You will. FOREVER.
Well ... something weird has to be going on in St. Louis.
Matt Carpenter is on the verge of signing an incredibly team-friendly contract extension with the Cardinals. According to Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal, the National League MVP candidate is considering a contract extension the could top out somewhere between $50 million and $55 million.
Last season, Carpenter transitioned to second base to fit his team's infield needs ...
And he ended up being the best second baseman in the NL, if not, the entire league.
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He was worth seven wins (according to FanGraphs), and his positional flexibility is benefitting the Cards once again. He will shift back to his natural position -- third base -- for 2014 to replace the departed David Freese, and so St. Louis can work Kolten Wong and Mark Ellis into the lineup at second -- and he might be doing it on a surprisingly team-friendly deal.
If Rosenthal's numbers are correct, the Cardinals will have secured one of their best players for the foreseeable future at an average annual value of less than $10 million. Not bad for a guy with a career .306/.381/.470 batting line in over 1,000 plate appearances.
In fact, it's better than not bad. It's borderline robbery, but the Cardinals (probably) aren't actually capable of telepathic coercive persuasion. Carpenter says he'd be "grateful" to play for the Cardinals and that playing in St. Louis is his "dream job." You can't really blame him. St. Louis is one of the best organizations in baseball. They have a consistent stream of excellent players and apparently, they're pretty charismatic employers as well.
(Obviously) it's not magic, or the occult. The Cardinals are just a proficient organization, and sometimes, their previous successes promote a continuance of that proficiency.
It's fun to joke about supernature or black magic, but it actually is kind of hard to describe the Cards' recent success without exaggerating.