Pitching looks easy when Chris Carpenter is on the mound. He works fast, throws strikes, and dares hitters to swing at his best stuff. It wasn’t always this simple, however. Chris went from blue-chip prospect to the worst pitcher in baseball in three short seasons, as elbow and shoulder injuries pushed his career to the brink. Now the ace of the winningest team in the National League, he is living proof that, given time, the cream can indeed rise to the top. This is his story…

GROWING UP

Christopher John Carpenter was born on April 27, 1975 in Exeter, New Hampshire. His father, Bob, worked for the electric company, while his mom, Penny, was comptroller for a car dealership. The Carpenters lived in Raymond, near the picturesque town of Manchester. Chris towered over children his age, and was quicker and stronger, too.

There were two loves in Chris’s early life, hockey and baseball. He would have played football as well, but by the time he was old enough for Pop Warner he was too big. Chris was one of those kids who could throw the ball with amazing velocity at an early age. He was dominating 12-year-olds in Little League at age eight, and by age 15 he was shutting down hitters in American Legion ball.

The summer after his sophomore year at Trinity High School, Chris was invited to compete in a tournament in Brockton, Massachusetts. When he and his dad showed up, they were dismayed to find that most of the players were college juniors and seniors. Chris pitched his way to the tourney’s MVP award, and from that point on there were scouts in the stands for every one of his starts.

Mike Flanagan, 1978 Topps

New Hampshire isn’t exactly a baseball hot bed. Carlton Fisk was its most famous product, but the state’s short baseball season was not conducive to developing pitchers. Indeed, Mike Flanagan, a star for the Baltimore Orioles in the 1970s, was the first top hurler to come out of New Hampshire. Hockey is a far more popular sport.

At 16, Chris made All-State on the ice as a defenseman for Trinity. Scouts from the Chicago Black Hawks and Boston Bruins were putting out feelers on whether he wanted to pursue a junior hockey career. By that time, however, Chris (who stood 6-6) had made up his mind he was better suited to pitching. He still made All-State in hockey as a junior and senior, however.

Chris finished his senior season for Trinity and was drafted in the first round by the Toronto Blue Jays, who used the 15th overall pick to get him. This was quite a thrill—the Jays were coming off a World Series championship, and were headed for another one that fall. It took a while to work out a contract, and everyone agreed that he would start his minor-league career the following spring.

Chris began his pro career with the Medicine Hat Jays of the short-season Pioneer League in 1994. In his debut against the Great Falls Dodgers, he tossed six scoreless innings of one-hit ball, fanning nine along the way. Chris ended up with a mark of 6-3 and turned in the league’s third-lowest ERA. He was also picked as the PL’s #3 prospect by league managers, behind Aaron Boone and Ray Brown.

Chris’s next stop was Dunedin, another short-season team, in 1995. He made 15 starts and gave up three or less runs in all but two. Chris was leap-frogged to Class-AA Knoxville and made 12 starts for manager Garth Iorg. He got cuffed around initially, but settled down with a sub 3.00 ERA in his last seven starts.

ON THE RISE

The plan for 1996 was to give Chris a full year at AA. He spent the entire campaign with the Smokies, where he went 7-9 while leading the club in innings pitched and strikeouts. In his nine losses, Chris gave up two runs or less five times, so the Toronto organization was very pleased with his season. Midway through the year, Chris was joined in the rotation by Kelvim Escobar. The Blue Jays were beginning to think they had the beginnings of a great young staff with these two and Roy Halladay, who had a big year at Dunedin.

Roger Clemens, 1998 SI for Kid

The 1997 season found Chris knocking on the door as part of the rotation at Class-AAA Syracuse. The big club had three top pitchers in Roger Clemens, Woody Williams and Pat Hentgen, but from there the starting options thinned out. On May 10, Chris got the call and two days later made his debut in a start against the Minnesota Twins. He was beaten 12-2, and appeared in two more games before being handed a ticket back to the minors. At the end of July, he was recalled and spent the rest of the year in Toronto’s starting rotation. He got his first win against the Chicago White Sox in August, and opened a lot of eyes with a shutout against the Anaheim Angels. Chris finished strong, posting one quality start after another, and ended his first major league season a very respectable 3-3 with a 3.30 ERA.

The Blue Jays were ecstatic with their young gun. After getting pummeled early on, Chris adjusted not by throwing harder, but by calmly changing speeds and altering pitching patterns. He handled lefties with his cutter, and fine-tuned his change-up to baffle righties. In his last five starts, he was throwing five different pitches for strikes.

The Blue Jays added Chris and Escobar to their rotation in May of 1998, and the team was transformed. From a last-place finish in ’97, they surged into Wild Card contention, and finished just four games behind the Boston Red Sox with 88 victories. Chris went 12-7, including a four-hit shutout of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays on July 4th. Once again, he finished strong, going 3-0 with a sub 3.00 ERA in September.

The 1999 Blue Jays had another winning season. Clemens had been traded to the New York Yankees for David Wells, who turned in a great year as the staff ace. Roy Halladay joined the rotation later in the season, so Toronto finally had its Big Three in place. That didn’t last long, however, as Chris began feeling pain in his right elbow in June. After a stint on the DL failed to relieve his discomfort, he was diagnosed with a bone spur in early September and went under the knife of Dr. James Andrews. He finished the year with a 9-8 record in 24 starts.

The team expected Chris to make a full comeback in 2000, but his elbow began barking again in spring training. In a pre-season game, his agony was compounded when he took a line drive off that same elbow. Chris refused to go on the DL, and simply tried to pitch through his problems. He made 34 starts, but most of them were pretty ugly. He still had his 95 mph fastball, but the pain in his elbow prevented him from getting the breaks he needed on his off-speed stuff, and his change-up completely vanished on him.

Chris Carpenter, 2000 Topps

The result was a 6.26 ERA, .496 slugging average allowed, and .396 on-base percentage allowed. All three marks were by far the worst in the American League. Chris had a handful of good starts, and left most of his bad ones early enough for the Jays to rally. He ended up 10-12, and Toronto finished a very respectable 83-79—just four games behind the Yankees in the AL East. The Jays had a powerful club led by Carlos Delgado, Tony Batista, Jose Cruz and Brad Fullmer. Chris knew that had he pitched better, the team probably could have been a playoff contender. His miserable season was capped off in September, when Jose Valentin lined a ball of his face.

The Blue Jays dangled Chris in trade talks over the winter, but no one was willing to offer what they thought he was worth. As they suspected, he righted his ship in 2001, tossing 215 solid innings with 11 wins and a 4.09 ERA. A weird seven-game losing streak in July and part of August kept his numbers down, but anyone who watched Chris pitch that year could see he was on his way back to top-of-the-rotation status. He was at his best with men in scoring position, yielding a meager .229 average to enemy batters.

The 2002 season promised to be an exciting one in Toronto. Halladay had rounded into form as a quality starter, Escobar had been converted to a closer, and the offense had become youth-driven, with the 30-year-old Delgado the oldest man in the lineup. Chris, anointed the Opening Day starter for the first time, was being counted on to lead the team’s staff, but he suffered through an injury-plagued campaign. He hit the DL after his first start, and made only a dozen more in '02. In August he was diagnosed with a torn labrum in his right shoulder and was shut down completely.

Chris had surgery to repair the injury in September. A month later, the team outrighted him to the minors, hoping he would accept the demotion. When he refused, he became a free agent. Chris signed with the St. Louis Cardinals for $300,000 in December. They believed he could return to form if given the proper amount of time to heal. Gord Ash, the former Toronto GM, agreed with this prognosis. He was working for the Brewers at this point, and urged them to sign Chris before the Cardinals did. Milwaukee did not want to gamble the money.

Chris arrived at spring training hoping his shoulder was fully healed. St. Louis decided to DL him to start the year. In an April workout for Tony La Russa and Walt Jocketty, his fastball was exploding into the catcher’s mitt, and his curves and sliders were breaking beautifully. The next day, Chris’s shoulder was on fire. After shutting down for a couple of months, Chris went on rehab. He spent six weeks pitching in the minors with no improvement. The Cardinals told him to stop throwing, and he went in for a second operation on his shoulder to clean out scar tissue. Hopefully, this would be the final fix.

MAKING HIS MARK

Matt Morris, 2002 Baseball Digest

Chris threw without pain in spring training and began 2004 in the Cardinals' rotation, along with Matt Morris, Jeff Suppan, Woody Williams, and Jason Marquis. After two months, he was 7-1, and basically the team’s #1 starter. Chris pitched even better over the next two months, as he recaptured his full repertoire.

Meanwhile, the Cardinals were running away with the NL Central. A powerhouse club led by Albert Pujols, Jim Edmonds and Scott Rolen topped the league in hits, runs and slugging. Chris got the least run support of any Cardinal pitcher, but he received enough to win 15 of his 20 decisions—good for second place in the league in winning percentage.

Chris was leading the Cardinals in ERA and strikeouts when his right biceps muscle became irritated in mid-September. This was not considered a serious injury, but it proved painful enough to keep him out of the post-season. Without Chris, the Cardinals barely survived the NLCS against the Houston Astros, and were swept by the Red Sox in the World Series.

Chris was certified 100 percent healthy at the start of 2005, and was signed to a $13 million, two-year deal. He was criticized for not demanding more—which he almost certainly would have gotten from the Cards or another club. But Chris felt that this was the team that had stuck with him, and he owed them.

Chris Carpenter, 2005 Topps

CHRIS THE PLAYER

When you watch Chris Carpenter on a good day, pitching looks so simple. He throws five pitches consistently for strikes—a sinking fastball, a cutter, a slider, a curve and a change-up. All come from the same arm slot, making it easy for hitters to pick up his pitches, but impossible for them to tell what the ball will do. They get wood on the ball, but hardly ever good wood.

When healthy, Chris is one of baseball’s most complete pitchers. His concentration is remarkable, and since he has learned to spot his pitches, he rarely lets himself have a bad inning. His only real enemy has been poor health. If Chris can avoid further injuries, expect him to lead the Cardinals into the playoffs year after year.