Carroll built on a stellar showing in the minors (and, briefly, the majors) in 2022 to break out in 2023, showing a tantalizing combination of contact ability, power, and speed.
Corbin Carroll needed very little time to adjust to big-league pitching as he put together a tremendous rookie campaign in 2023. In his age-22 season, Carroll batted .285 with 25 homers, 76 RBI, 116 runs scored, and 54 stolen bases (in 59 tries) across 645 plate appearances, with a robust wRC+ of 131. It was a campaign that will undoubtedly secure him the NL Rookie of the Year Award.
That Carroll broke out this past season wasn’t exactly surprising given his background. The Diamondbacks drafted him in the first round – 16th overall – out of Lakeside Highschool in Seattle back in 2019. With an excellent showing in Rookie and Low-A ball that year in which he hit for average, drew walks, and showed his speed on the basepaths, Baseball America and MLB Pipeline ranked Carroll as one of the top 100 prospects in all of baseball entering the 2020 campaign. That season, of course, featured no formal competition in the minors.
Carroll began the 2021 campaign in High-A, but logged just 29 PA as he underwent season-ending surgery in May to repair a posterior capsular avulsion and a labrum tear in his right shoulder. The sample size was tiny, but it was encouraging to see him rake to open the campaign (.435 average) while swiping a few bags (3) and matching the number of homers (2) that he hit in 186 PA the year before. Despite hardly playing that season, he surged into the top 40 for Baseball America, MLB Pipeline, and Baseball Prospectus in advance of the 2022 season.
He spent about half of the 2022 campaign in Double-A, where he truly began to break out. Across 277 PA, Carroll hit .313 with 16 dingers, 39 RBI, 62 runs scored, and 20 steals (in 23 attempts), with a wRC+ of 166. He drew walks at a healthy 15% clip, but it’s worth noting that his strikeout – as it would be throughout his minor-league career – was on the high side at 25%. That was not due to an inability to make contact, though, as he registered a 9% swinging-strike rate. A selection to the Futures Game cemented that he was viewed as a rising star.
Having little left to prove at the Double-A level, Diamondbacks management prompted Carroll to Triple-A. There, he hit .287 with 7 homers, 22 RBI, 25 runs scored, and 11 thefts (in 13 chances) across 157 PA, with a wRC+ of 135. Encouragingly, he continued to hit for both average and power at the highest level of the minors while maintaining a 15% walk rate and trimming his strikeout rate to a more palatable 23%.
Arizona called up its budding star for a cup of coffee down the stretch in 2023. In 115 PA with the big club, he recorded a .260 average to go with 4 dingers, 14 RBI, 13 runs scored, and 2 steals (3 tries), with a wRC+ of 131. He was clearly in the process of acclimating to big-league pitching in his age-21 season, as his walk rate came in at just 7% and his strikeout rate spiked to 27%. His swinging-strike rate did come in over 11%, but he chased pitches outside the zone at a pretty average 32% clip. Contact on pitches inside the zone was, however, a shortcoming, as Carroll’s z-contact% came in at just 81%, and his overall contact rate (74%) wasn’t impressive as a result. And his contact rate wasn’t great (26%) in his first taste of big-league action. Even so, his body of work in 2022 vaulted him up the prospect rankings as a consensus top-10 prospect, with Baseball America and MLB Pipeline putting him as the #2 prospect in baseball and Baseball Prospectus ranking him #6.
Carroll therefore took major steps forward in 2023 as he spent the entire campaign with the Diamondbacks. He drew more walks (9%) while cutting his strikeout rate to an acceptable 19%. Carroll trimmed his swinging-strike rate to just under 9% while raising his contact rate to an average 81%. He chased slightly less often (30.5%), but especially encouraging was the fact that he made much more frequent contact on pitches inside the zone (z-contact% up to 89%). And while his hard-contact rate improved to 33%, that’s still not an exciting figure. Meanwhile, his HR/FB (15%) wasn’t exactly astronomical, so 25ish homers seems repeatable. Pair that with his combination of plus-plus speed and efficiency on the basepaths, and we have a first-round talent for fantasy. The lower hard-hit rate is a bit concerning, but his overall ability to make contact, get on base, and swipe bags will help to buoy his fantasy value even if he hits only, say, 20 dingers. Besides, there is precedent for guys who don’t generate frequent hard contact hitting for surprising power, such as Jose Altuve and his 29% career hard-hit rate.
There were, however, some encouraging developments for Carroll as the season progressed. In particular, he improved his ability to generate loud contact down the stretch, as he posted a 35% hard-hit rate after the All-Star break after recording a 32% in that department before the break. His liner rate also jumped to 21.5% during the second half after coming in at just 17% during the first half. Despite the improved hard contact, his HR/FB dipped from a lucky 20% before the break to under 10% after.
Overall, it appears that Carroll’s breakout in 2023 is legitimate. He has the prospect pedigree and his body of work in 2022 suggested that he could be a star in the majors. The unimpressive contact rate was the main red flag in his advanced metrics, but he improved that over the course of the season and, in short, showed his tantalizing combination of plus hit tool, plus power tool, and plus-plus speed over the course of a full season of big-league action. He’ll be a first-round pick in 2024 fantasy drafts, and for good reason.
Photo credit: Casey Aguinaldo, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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