As we close in on the opening of spring camp with pitchers and catchers due to report on Wednesday, pitching has rightly been the focus in recent weeks. Framber Valdez and Tarik Skubal have kept that group firmly in the spotlight. The position players won’t have to report for a few extra days on February 15, but the attention is going to start turning their way quickly with the pitching staff now in a very good place. There are a few names to key on, but certainly one of them is going to be Kerry
Carpenter.
After a down year in which Carpenter’s plate discipline cracked over the course of the season, and now just two years from free agency, the popular slugger could really use a bit of a bounceback season in which he stays healthy for a full year. His team’s ambition to make a deep run in October looks a lot more realistic if he can manage it.
2025 was still a pretty good year at the plate by most players’ standards. Carpenter hit .253 with 26 home runs over 464 plate appearances. He got roughly three-quarters of a season’s worth of at-bats despite a hamstring injury that he tried to play through in June before finally hitting the injured list for much of July. Going a full year without his hamstrings or his back tightening up on him would certainly help his chances of a big season, but he’s never managed a full season without an issue cropping up.
On the downside, Carpenter’s walk rate cratered to just 3.9 percent, producing a pretty miserable .291 on-base percentage that really held down his overall production despite the power. A 115 wRC+ is still well above average, but it was also the worst mark of his pro career. No one expects Carpenter to be an on-base machine, but he’s got to work that back to the .310-.320 OBP range.
His chase rates, which hit career lows in 2024 and looked to have him on track to become a more selective, more dangerous hitter in his late 20’s, spiked 3.5 percent to 34.8 percent, significantly worse than league average. He did make more contact overall, trimming his swinging strike rate a bit, but he also took more called strikes than usual. For a player trying to earn more playing time against left-handed hitters by showing a more mature approach, taking more strikes and swinging at more pitches you can’t drive is decidedly not the path. Carpenter is no longer a young player who might breakout. Instead he just needs to maximize the tools he already has to work with.
Looking through his numbers, there is no smoking gun that really gives cause for concern other than the overall chase rate. His bat speed still looks unchanged, and he was extremely good againt fastballs in 2025 as usual. He posted a strong .385 wOBA against all fastballs in 2025, and a .376 wOBA against fastballs above 94 mph. That is very positive, illustrating that there’s no underlying weakness in his physical ability at the plate. He whiffed a little more against breaking balls in 2025, but he also did more damage against them, which also suggests that a slight down year might just be random variation and possibly the result of playing with a sore hamstring for much of June. He was somewhat streaky in 2025, but his 112 wRC+ in the first half, and his 118 wRC+ in the second half, say he was still reasonably productive throughout the year.
So, plate discipline is one minor area of concern. The other is that fairly lengthy injury history. Going back to 2023, Carpenter dealt with a strained hamstring coming out of camp. He then injured his shoulder in late April and missed six weeks of time on the injured list. In 2024 he missed time from late May to mid-August with a lumbar stress fracture, and then aggravated his left hamstring in the ALDS. Then we had a right hamstring strain in 2025 that plagued him for weeks in late May and throughout June before he finally went on the injured list in July.
On the plus side, Carpenter still has average speed and there’s no sign of him losing a step defensively despite playing through the hamstring issue. He was a negative 3 Outs Above Average in 2025, which is not ideal, but basically par for the course for Carpenter. He was 23rd out of 36 qualifed right fielders, so very far from the bottom of the list. The injuries don’t seem to be cutting into his overall athletic ability. They just keep limiting his total production by putting him on the injured list for a stint every season.
Carpenter is still a valuable, dangerous hitter. He’s still a force in the lineup against right-handed pitching, and his somewhat maligned defense is still just a little below average rather than a problem. For an unheralded ninth round pick back in 2019, he’s already far exceeded expectations. Right-handed pitchers do not want to see Kerry Carpenter up in a big spot late in a game. That much is certain. It’s just getting hard to envision Carpenter getting any better than we’ve already seen from him, or just putting together one big season where everything goes right. He’s tracking more like a player who is at his peak and may start declining over the next year or two. It would be nice to see the trendline flip back the other way.
Projection systems like ZIPS do forecast more walks and a return to a more respectable on-base percentage this season. ZIPS projects a .262/.318/.491 slashline with 24 home runs in 464 plate appearances in 2026. That would do nicely, and is well within Carpenter’s abilities. Combine that with a bit below average defense in right field, and you still have a very good strong side platoon player.
A sticking point for some fans remains Carpenter getting pinch-hit for against left-handers. He holds a miserable 69 wRC+ against lefties in his career, though he’s only had 197 plate appearances against southpaws in his career. His numbers weren’t any better against them in 2025, so you can expect it to continue. A.J. Hinch can’t miss opportunities to put a lefty masher like Jahmai Jones into a prime spot.
This is always the difficulty with having platoons rather than stars who can do it all at several positions. Hinch makes it work and there weren’t many instances during the season in which Carpenter started, was pinch-hit for late in a game, and ultimately missed out on a plate appearance later. Plus, sitting him against left-handed starters means that Hinch can pick a high leverage spot in which to bring Carpenter off the bench, putting opposing managers in a difficult position.
Ultimately, Kerry Carpenter should bounce back a little and otherwise continue to do Kerry Carpenter things. It would just be great to see him get through a full season of good health and really see him max out his production for a season. With two years left to free agency and due to turn 29 in September, it would be very good for him as well. As a fan favorite, and an integral part of the lineup, we’d love to see a huge season from Carpenter, but all he really needs to do is recover a bit of selectivity at the plate this season. If he can manage that, the Tigers will be plenty happy with his production as usual.
