It's not just you: Matt Carpenter can't stop hitting line drives

If it feels like every time you turn on a Cardinals game, you end up seeing Matt Carpenter hit a line drive, like he did with his first-inning single, it's not just you! Since the start of the 2012 season, 25 percent of Carpenter's balls in play have been line drives, the eighth highest total during that time frame.

Because he doesn't have a ton of power -- or at least, he didn't show a lot in the regular season, though you wouldn't know that from watching his postseason home run barrage -- Carpenter still flies a bit under the radar, but he is one of the game's elite hard-contact hitters. Beyond just hitting a ton of line drives, he also avoids weak contact as well as anyone; only 2.3 percent of his fly balls stay on the infield, the fifth lowest total over the last three years.

Carpenter is just a pure hitter, an old-school throwback in the mold of Wade Boggs or Tony Gwynn. And he's one of the main reasons why St. Louis is in the NLCS yet again.