Milwaukee Brewers: Could Predictions Be Spot on for Chris Carter?

As Chris Carter has been one of the few bright spots in the Milwaukee Brewers lineup, some predictions thought he’d be a good catch, while others didn’t, but how does the start compare to his overall career?

With Chris Carter’s .283 AVG, 10 HRs, 22 RBIs, and a low 27.4% K rate (for Carter himself), it’s nice Milwaukee Brewers fans have a player to talk about more than, “he’s not yet ready for the big leagues, injured, dud, etc.” With many articles being written about how great of a start he’s had, just how realistic is that he’ll keep this going and not have a long cold streak?

First, Dan Szymborski and his ZiPS projections were quite positive for the 2016 season for Chris Carter as a 31 HR, 85 RBI season wouldn’t come as any surprise to him. But, then again Beyond the Box Score pointed out just because one projection shows a positive possibility doesn’t mean they’ll all agree.

On the other side, Fangraphs’ Steamer Projections has Chris Carter hitting 21 HRs, 54 RBIs. An overall WAR of 0.9 compared to the ZiPS projections of an overall “zWAR” of 0.9. So, the debate begins with Chris Carter’s hot month are the ZiPS projections spot on?

The answer: it’s way too early. But, the more important question is when Chris Carter has a cold streak, will it last long that his positive projections won’t be realistic? To be fair with Carter, we can look at his weakest month in 2014 when he had his best year (.227 AVG, 37 HRs, 88 RBIs, 1.8 WAR) and his weakest month in 2015 when he had his roughest year (.199 AVG, 24 HRs, 64 RBIs, 0.3 WAR).

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We’ll get the big negative out of the way first as in 2015 his weakest month by far was July with a .109 AVG, 3 HR, 7 RBIs, but that was in only 14 games as he sat out a number of them to try and stop the cold streak. Playing 21 Gs in April, he had a .160 AVG, 2 HR, and 6 RBI. The argument could be made he had a weaker August, but the OBP of .267 compared to .300 may settle that.

To look at his more positive season of 2014, Chris Carter’s coldest streak was April as he batted .153 with 3 HRs and 8 RBIs. Only in June did he have a higher K% of 37.0%, but certainly made up for it with 8 HRs and 16 RBIs. (Maybe this was the time where the “Moneyball” Athletics shook their heads on another player they found something in, but assistant GMs like David Stearns for the Houston Astros were now catching up.)