It was being reported on Monday evening that the Dodgers have expressed at least a mild interest in 30-year-old free agent first baseman / left fielder Chris Carter.

If Carter’s name sounds familiar to you, it well should. Last season with the Milwaukee Brewers, the Redwood City, California native and seven-year MLB veteran hit a National League-best 41 home runs while posting an excellent OPS of .821. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he also led the NL with his 206 strikeouts. He also owned a paltry .222 batting average and less-than-stellar .321 on-base percentage in 2016.

A deal for Carter, which was first reported by Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal, would come with a bit of a twist for the Dodgers. Should they elect to sign him, they would have to pay a 50 percent tax on every dollar they were to spend on him for exceeding the MLB-imposed luxury-tax threshold. That being said, there is every indication that any deal for Carter would most likely be for only one year and somewhere in the $2 to $3 million range.

Carter was initially selected by the Chicago White Sox in the 15th round of the 2005 MLB First-Year Player Draft out of Sierra Vista High School in Las Vegas, Nevada and has twice been non-tendered a contract. As a result, Carter’s agent (wait for it) Dave Stewart is unhappy with the way that his client has been dealt with and utilized over the past two seasons, in spite of his power bat.

“It’s going to be important for Chris to get significant playing time,” Stewart said. “He already took a step back last year when he was non-tendered. It looks like he’ll take a step backwards after getting being [SIC] non-tendered again. We don’t want to get him in a place where he doesn’t get enough at-bats and is doing the same dance next year.”

If Carter is looking for more at-bats, it is very unlikely that he would get them with the Dodgers. Although the right-handed-hitting Carter slugged 12 of his 41 home runs against lefties in 2016, he hit only .224 against them while striking out 43 times. By comparison, 34-year-old left-handed-hitting Dodgers first baseman Adrian Gonzalez hit .244 against lefties in 2016 but slugged only two of his 18 home runs off of southpaws. That said, AGon hit a very impressive .294 against lefties in 2015, but again with only two home runs.

While Carter’s NL-best 41 home runs in 2016 are certainly enticing, there is no way that he would get enough at-bats with the Dodgers in 2017 to come anywhere near that number.
(Photo credit – Brad Rempel)

On the other side of the ball, Carter committed 11 errors in 1,400 total chances at first base for the Brewers in 2016 for an impressive .992 fielding percentage. By comparison – and it isn’t really – Gonzalez committed only two errors in 1,192 total chances for an alien-like .998 FPCT.

Although some might see adding Carter as a back-up for Gonzalez for one season as a potential roadblock for Dodgers number one-ranked first base prospect Cody Bellinger, it would give the 21-year-old Scottsdale, Arizona native a full year at Triple-A Oklahoma City to further his development, just as the recent signing of veteran second baseman Logan Forsythe did for Dodgers fifth-ranked second base prospect Willie Calhoun. That being said, the Dodgers already have Forsythe, Yasmani Grandal, Darin Ruf, Rob Segedin and Scott Van Slyke on their 25-man roster, all of whom have experience at first base. (Do you see where this is going?).

As a related side note, it was reported last week that Carter is also looking into possibly playing in Japan in 2017 where – to be brutally honest – he stands a far better chance of getting “enough at-bats” than he would with the Dodgers.