Much ink and bandwidth have been spilled trying to figure out what's wrong with Corbin Carroll. The 2023 rookie of the year came into this season with high expectations after batting .285 BA, .868 OPS, with 30 doubles, 10 triples, and 25 homers. He also stole 54 bases and got caught just five times.
But the 2024 season was a nightmare for Carroll for the first 11 weeks. Through June 8th, 63 games and 273 plate appearances, Carroll was hitting just .199/.286/.286, .572 OPS. The power had almost completely disappeared, with just seven doubles, four triples, and two homers.
Since he wasn't getting on base, he wasn't stealing bases either, swiping just 10 bags while getting caught four times.
Carroll was striking out frequently (52 times), and either hitting the ball weakly on the ground or popping it up. Legions of writers and analysts tried to figure out what was wrong, including this one.
But it was Carroll himself that explained swing changes he tried to make in spring training to close a hole on pitches up and in backfired. His swing became too flat.
— Jesse Friedman (@JesseNFriedman) May 5, 2024Corbin Carroll got pretty specific here on what’s gone wrong at the plate:
“I made my swing too flat, and so it's been a lot of work to try and create better attack angles and a better vertical bat angle." pic.twitter.com/amwyI1K5xB
Realizing the problem and fixing the problem are two different things. It's extremely difficult to make changes and overhauls mid-season. For a long time it seemed like two steps forward and one step back for Carroll.
From June 9th to July 4th, a span of 22 games, Carroll began to slowly turn things around. He batted .244/.344/.372, .716 OPS. The power hadn't returned, as he hit just six doubles, two triples and zero homers. But he was getting on base, walking 11 times and scoring 19 runs. He had started contributing in a positive way.
Starting from July 5th, when he hit two doubles, the power has started to return. In his last 23 games, 101 PA, Carroll is batting .235/.330/.577, for a .907 OPS. He has three doubles, four triples, and six homers. 13 of his 20 hits have gone for extra bases, for an XBH/H rate of 65%. His stolen base total is up to 20 as well, having gone 10 for his last 11 in attempts.
The full season batting line is still an unsightly .215/.307/.364, .671 OPS. That comes out to a 90 OPS+ (100 = league average). He has 16 doubles, 10 triples, and 8 homers. It should be noted that Carroll's "expected" averages based on Statcast batted ball metrics indicate Carroll has been somewhat unlucky. He has a .251 xBA and .396 xSLG.
While it's probably too late for Carroll to rescue his season batting line, he still has a reasonable chance to come out of this above league average.
FanGraphs Depth Chart projections have him posting a .773 OPS for the rest of the season, which would bring him to a .702 OPS by the end of the year. League average OPS is .712 in 2024. In order to reach a .712 OPS, Carroll would need to post up at .810 OPS the rest of the season.
That certainly seems well within range. More importantly, hitting anywhere in the vicinity of .800 OPS for the rest of the season would go a long way to helping the Diamondbacks back into the postseason.
There are still issues for Carroll to resolve. The power surge is welcome, but a 65% XBH/H rate is not sustainable (his career average is 42% and league average is 35%). Carroll needs to achieve more consistently solid contact and increase his batting and on base percentages to set the table for the hitters behind him.
He leads all of MLB with a 23.1% Infield Fly per Fly ball rate, also known as popup rate. League average is 13.1%. That popup rate has improved too however. Since July 15th it's been 15.2%, just slightly worse than league average.
The high number of popups are a direct result of the still somewhat flat swing Carroll described, and also a stride that tends to get too long at times. This video from two weeks ago dove into the swing issues that Carroll has slowly been correcting.
While it's taken a lot longer for Carroll to emerge from his sophom*ore slump than many expected, he's a good bet going forward to be a productive member on a team battling for a postseason berth.
Corbin Carroll's Fastball Problem Leads to a Sophom*ore Slump
