Matt Carpenter never swings. People with dictionaries might take objection to the use of the word “never” in that context, but relative to his peers, Carpenter essentially doesn’t remove the bat from his shoulder. In 2014, he swung at just 32.8% of the pitches that came his way, which was the lowest mark among qualified hitters by quite a bit. Brett Gardner and Jayson Werth tied for second, swinging at 36.8% of the pitches they saw last year.

Since his debut in 2011, Carpenter’s swing percentage is the lowest in baseball among batters with 1000 PA. Joe Mauer is second and nearly a full percentage point behind. No one has mastered the art of the take like the Cardinals infielder, and that passivity hasn’t hurt his ability to make contact either. Among the same group, he’s 30th in contact rate since 2011.

In fact, last year, Pablo Sandoval nearly swung at a higher percentage of pitches outside the zone than Carpenter did against pitches inside the zone. When it comes to pitches outside the zone, Carpenter’s 17.4% was two percent lower than any other hitter. At a glance, you have to assume that Carpenter almost never chases bad pitches and if he does chase one, there has to be a pretty good reason.

Carpenter swung 1024 times against 3101 pitches using the Baseball-Savant repository (soaking up a few extra foul balls), giving us a 33% swing rate to consider. If we drop out any pitch that fell into the strike zone per Savant, we’re down to 414 total pitches. Carpenter swung at a pitch outside the zone in about 58% of his plate appearances on average.

You have to imagine that a lot of those 414 came with two strikes, and you’d be right. He swing at 253 two-strike pitches out of the zone, totaling 61% of his chases. That leaves us with 161 chases with zero or one strike for Carpenter in 2014. Let’s boil it down using an arbitrary cutoff. Let’s take a look at the five pitches Carpenter swung at last year that were the farthest from the center of the zone with fewer than two strikes. Of course you use other cutoffs or other distance rules, but these five pitches capture the essence of Carpenter quite well.

5) August 23, 1-1 fastball

It’s a check swing. Carpenter decided he didn’t want to offer at this pitch a fraction of a second too late and his bat just happened to make contact with it. It was a harmless ground out, but we learned that even when Carpenter tries not to swing, he still makes contact. You’ll also notice this pitch isn’t that far outside and that we’re dealing with a lefty with a mildly tricky arm slot.

4) June 27, 0-0 fastball

Oh, it’s a bunt. He was probably asked to bunt. Another lefty with deception in his motion, but also not a wild swing by any definition. Carpenter was simple trying to lay a bunt down. Okay, let’s try this again.

3) June 8, 0-1 curveball

Finally! Brett Cecil makes Carpenter look foolish, catching him completely off guard. This pitch is sufficiently in the dirt and his timing was way off. Even Carpenter recognizes immediately that this is going to wind up immortalized in GIF form right away and stares Cecil down. We’ve found the formula, a lefty with a some deception who features a quality hook.

2) April 21, 1-1 changeup

And we have another instance of Carpenter pulling up at the last moment. He knows it’s going to be a bad pitch and he just can’t avoid crossing into “swing” territory. It’s a lefty with deception, too, but Carpenter probably isn’t losing sleep over this one because he didn’t really take a full cut.

1) July 23, 2-0 changeup

Just for a brief moment, you want to rejoice. A right-handed pitcher got Carpenter to swing at a 2-0 pitch that was both high and outside. The pitch was outside the zone and a pretty long way from the center of the zone. Alex Cobb appears to be a pitching genius, until the camera pans out and you realize we’re smack dab in the middle of a hit-and-run. Carpenter didn’t swing at the pitch because he was fooled by the pitcher, he swung because he was mandated to do so.

So among the five non-two-strike swings Carpenter took at pitches that were the farthest from the center of the zone in 2014, we have two check swings, a bunt, a hit-and-run, and one bona fide instance of a pitcher making a hitter look foolish.

It’s no surprise that Cecil delivered the most impressive pitch of the bunch given the steps forward he’s taken over the last year, but this exercise further solidifies Carpenter’s place among baseball’s selective elite. Even four of Carpenter’s five worst reaches are easily explained away. It’s not just that he doesn’t chase pitches very often it’s that he never gets caught swinging wildly if he has a strike to spare.

And if not for one instance of Brett Cecil, the use of the word never in the preceding sentence would be truly accurate.