Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Corbin Carroll is having such an elite season — historic for a player in his first full year — that one teammate suggested he already may have outplayed his new contract.
You know, the eight-year $111 million deal he signed in spring training.
Carroll has been that forceful.
“Magical,” Arizona bench coach Jeff Banister called it, hours after another of Carroll’s everything, everywhere, all at once forays in a 7-1 victory over San Francisco on Sept. 20.
All he did then was steal two bases, the first of which led to a manufactured run after a pair of infield grounders, hit his 25th homer to add some insurance, and make a glove-extended running catch in left-center field for the final out of the game. It was his fifth game with at least one homer and one stolen base.
“He can carry us,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. “He brings a certain edge to the game because of his precision and because of his athleticism. He makes plays when times are right. It’s hard to explain when that clicks for somebody. I don’t know when it clicked for him, but it was certainly clicking last year when he got to us, and he has gotten even better at the timing of everything he does. That’s hard to do for a (23)-year old player.
“I mean, ‘Come on.’ What are we talking about here, right? He is talented and getting better, and that’s all he wants to do. All he wants to do is get better every day, and that’s what makes him so incredible.”
Corbin Carroll’s feat one for history
Carroll that day became the first rookie in major league history to have a 25-homer, 50-stolen base season. He was also the first to 20/50, for that matter. He is the third player to reach those plateaus by his age 23 season, joining Cesar Cedeno (1974, Houston) and Hanley Ramirez (2007, Florida).
The only comparable rookie season was Mike Trout’s first year in 2012, when he had 30 homers and 49 stolen bases. Tommie Agee had 27 homers and 44 stolen bases for the White Sox in 1966.
Both Trout and Agee won the AL Rookie of the Year, and Carroll should be a unanimous choice in the NL this season despite several impressive rookie years in Cincinnati. He also has played a major role in positioning Arizona for one of the three NL wild card spots as the regular season winds down.
“Am I surprised? No, not at all,” Christian Walker said, answering his own question. “This is a season that he is very capable of. I think it can be the norm. At a certain point, this could be a floor. He has tools. He’s polished. He’s critical of himself. He’s thoughtful. He’s intentional. Yeah, there is a lot of raw ability, but I think it is going to turn into a polished product here soon.”
Carroll was the 16th player taken in the first round of the 2019 draft, and he was an immediate hit despite missing the 2020 COVID-interrupted season while staying at the Diamondbacks’ training facility. The Diamondbacks promoted Carroll to the majors from Triple-A Reno the final week of August 2022, after he had a combined 24 homers and 31 stolen bases at three minor league levels.
“For those who knew him through the system, every manager that had him became his biggest fan,” Lovullo said. “They said that he just does it the right way. He is so process oriented. It’s machine-like. He has a rhythm to everything he does. There is no wasted time. A lot of the teams he was on were kind of carried by him, and we felt that if we got his feet wet last year and gave him a taste of it … He’s a quick learner. We thought he had a chance to have this good a year for sure.”
Carroll’s record contract as negotiated with his representatives at CAA is the longest and most expensive ever given to a player with that little (38 days) major league service time. Wander Franco signed his 11-year, $182 million contract extension after his first season.
A deal that good for Arizona Diamondbacks
Carroll is scheduled to make $1 million, $3 million, $5 million, $10 million, $12 million and $14 million in the first six seasons of the deal, all of which would have been under club control. The Diamondbacks bought out his first two free agent years with salaries of $28 million in 2029 and $30 million in 2030, with a club option for $28 million that includes a $5 million buyout in 2031.
“There was a tradeoff. At the end of the day, putting the free agency year-by-year value for a player who hadn’t even played a full year at $28 million, I felt comfortable with that,” Carroll said.
“At the end of the day, it might be a discount, it might not. We’ll see. And when you talk about a contract of such length, one year good or bad doesn’t define it. This year, having plenty of ups to it … what if I get hurt tomorrow? The security aspect of it, while still feeling I had some upside at the end of the contract, were some of the biggest parts.”
Carroll was characteristically low-key after the Giants’ game Sept. 20, reiterating that he is just glad to find ways to contribute.
“Still focused on the year at hand,” he said. “Hopefully a lot of ball left to be played. There have been plenty of highs, plenty of lows and plenty of learning experiences. The biggest thing has been playing meaningful baseball games this late.
“That is something I hope to do a lot in my career, because it is a lot of fun.”
Jack Magruder covers MLB for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.