JUPITER, Fla. — Matthew Liberatore was taking his normal seat in the Cardinals dugout before a game earlier this spring when Matt Carpenter sat down next to him.
The two, along with Ivan Herrera on the other side of Carpenter, started talking. Five innings later, all three were still there.
“I felt bad,” Liberatore said. “It was me on one side and Herrera on the other and it was just question, question, question, question. I was like, ‘We’ve got to stop asking questions or he’s going to walk away.’ Five innings straight, any question we wanted.
“He sat there and talked to us and gave us thorough and thoughtful responses. We were five innings deep into the conversation before we knew it.”
Told that story later, Carpenter smiled.
“That’s why I’m here,” he said. “Being able to have those conversations, that’s what it’s all about.”
Same location, but in a different place
Carpenter is back with the Cardinals this spring, returning to the place where he has spent most of his major-league career, even occupying the same locker in the clubhouse next to the door.
Physically it’s the same. But in reality, Carpenter is in a far different place.
He isn’t expected to be the team leader in home runs or RBIs. He isn’t going to be hitting leadoff and playing first base on a regular basis. Carpenter knows those days are behind him and in at least one way, that has freed him mentally for his new role – still a player, but also a sounding board, a resource, for a team with many talented young players they believe he can help.
“This is a role I’ve never really had in my time here,” Carpenter said. “It’s also one that I am really enjoying and looking forward to. One of the best parts of playing for a long time is getting the opportunity to speak into some of the younger players lives and careers like so many veterans did for me when I was first coming up.
“My role, my personal agenda, is so far on the backburner. I really want to help any guy I can. It can be a veteran guy as well. There is a key to really good teams of being able to make sure that everybody is in a good place mentally. If you can fire a veteran guy up or give a young guy confidence there’s value in that and that’s really what I’m most excited about.”
It’s been 13 years since Carpenter walked into the clubhouse for his first major-league spring training with the Cardinals and soon found himself getting advice from veterans including Lance Berkman, Matt Holliday and Skip Schumaker in the early years of his career.
The son of a long-time high school coach, Carpenter listened, learned and turned that advice and his own determination into a career that has included three All-Star selections, seven trips to the post-season and more than 1,200 career hits.
It’s a career he could have retired from this past winter and, now 38, been content with his accomplishments, ready to move on to the next phase of his life.
“I very well could have walked away from the game and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it,” Carpenter said. “I’ve got two young kids at home I want to be around. I’ve got a wife who has been a superstar through a lot of my career. I would be lying if I said it didn’t cross my mind.
“But I still wanted to play obviously and being able to come here and do what I love for the organization that I have such a love for and history with, I couldn’t turn that opportunity down.”
Carpenter said he did receive interest from other teams, which might have included more of an opportunity to play than he likely will get with the Cardinals – where he will primarily be a pinch-hitter, sometimes as a DH and occasionally getting a start at first base.
What those teams couldn’t offer, however, was the relationship he has with manager Oli Marmol – a former minor-league teammate – and the reality that he has something to offer to the team’s younger players.
It is a role Carpenter is ready to embrace, freed from the role he had before during many of his seasons with the Cardinals.
“When I was an everyday player, making significant money on a long-term contract, I felt an immense amount of pressure,” Carpenter said. “This is not a fair way to think about it because it’s not true, but in my own head, I felt like my performance was a direct reflection on whether we were going to win or lose.
“I carried a lot of pressure during those years. Some of the years where we just fell short of the playoffs were very highly stressful.”
Because he understands that pressure, and knows what that burden feels like, Carpenter believes he can help prevent other players from experiencing it.
“Now to me it’s more about helping unload the pressure off the guys who are going to be playing everyday,” he said. “It’s a real thing.
“I don’t want to put myself on a pedestal, but I am just really trying to serve as much as I can and just be a voice and a teammate and have my radar up for guys who need to have conversations and try to pick guys up when they are down or fire them up when they need it and not really think about it from my perspective.
“I’m really trying more than anything to think about myself as little as possible. It’s enjoyable when you get to that point.
“That’s the beauty of why I am really enjoying coming to work every day. It’s not that I don’t care. I want to perform well when I get the opportunity but it’s just not my focus. It’s not what is bringing me joy right now. I really enjoy having conversations and helping guys more than anything else.”
'I just like picking his brain'
On Monday, both Masyn Winn and Victor Scott II were not in the Cardinals lineup. Guess who was sitting between them on the bench in the dugout during the game? Carpenter.
“We were just talking,” said Winn, whose locker is next to Carpenter in the clubhouse. “He was asking me what I do well. He was talking to Vic and I was kind of just eavesdropping on their conversation. It was good baseball talk.
“I asked him about how he hits with no batting gloves. I’ve always been curious about that, but have never done that. He’s so smart. I just like picking his brain.”
Jordan Walker also has had conversations with Carpenter this spring, mostly focused on mental aspects to the game.
“He talks through pretty much every part of the game,” Walker said. “If we mess up he is the first one here talking to us. If we do something well he’s the first one talking to us, explaining why what we did was good or bad.”
Marmol said that already this spring, three young players have walked into his office, unsolicited, to tell him about a conversation they had with Carpenter and how it had helped them.
None of the three were Winn, Walker or Liberatore.
“They all said how much value Carp has brought to them already, just in conversations that he has approached them with,” Marmol said about the players who came into his office. “There’s a difference when you’re a young guy and you want to ask one of the veterans a question but he is intentional about going up to them and starting a conversation. That’s a big deal.
“It just creates a little more comfort in them if they do have something to bring up … That’s why we signed him. We know him really well and what he’s capable of doing on that side of it.”
None of the players told Carpenter about their conversation with Marmol, and Marmol didn’t tell it to Carpenter either. He didn’t need to; it is what both expected to happen this spring, and expect to continue to happen throughout the season.
“It makes me feel good,” Carpenter said. “I get a lot of enjoyment out of that. I think that’s for the greater good of this team. Those are things that are very important.
“When you get to the end of your career, you look at it and think that it’s not as much about survival as it is enjoyment. You realize how important things are in the game like spending time with guys. I get way more out of giving than receiving at this point.”
Carpenter knows his new role with the Cardinals could in one sense be a transition. Coaching on an official basis might be in his future one day but it isn’t a decision he is ready to make now, just as he isn’t ready to say this will be the final year of his playing career.
“Coaching is definitely in my blood because of my dad, and there’s no question in my mind if I hadn’t made it as a player I would have for sure gotten into coaching probably at the collegiate level,” he said. “I spent a lot of time at TCU and really have a love for that. I certainly could see myself doing it in the future but what that would look like or when that would be I’m not sure, but I could see it happening no doubt.
“Baseball is a crazy game. You never know what could happen. That’s why I don’t want to announce or say this is it because you just never know. It certainly could be.”
Before he reaches that point, however, Carpenter knows there are more conversations he needs to have – with Winn, with Walker, with Brendan Donovan, with Liberatore, with Herrera and with all of the other young Cardinals. He knows his work isn’t done, it’s just beginning.
“I think somebody like him who is able to share and help in that way is invaluable to a clubhouse,” Liberatore said. “His conversations are awesome. He’s a leader. He knows what it takes to win.”
Added Donovan, whose conversations have included advice about hitting in the leadoff spot, “I’m blown away just by how approachable he is. He’s done it for so long. I just try to watch his routine and how guys like him go about their business. It’s no surprise he’s had the success he’s had.”
Winn believes that part of the Cardinals success this season will be due to Carpenter’s presence, even on days when his name doesn’t appear in the box score.
“He goes out of his way to try to help the younger guys and give us advice every day,” Winn said. “He’s got great energy and he shows up every day and he’s the same guy. He knows his role but he goes in there and works every single day. He is showing the younger guys how to work.”
And Carpenter is enjoying himself, maybe even more than he expected before he arrived in Jupiter.
“My mindset is I take every day like it’s going to be my last because it could be,” Carpenter said. “I also don’t want to pin myself down to saying this is it for sure it. I’m just enjoying every day.
“I didn’t really have any kind of expectations (coming into the spring) other than my hope and assumption that this would be a good group, that is hard working, gets along well and has a chance to win. I think we check all of those boxes.”
Follow Rob Rains on X @RobRains.
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