The ball left Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Corbin Carroll’s bat with an exit velocity of 94.8 mph, more of a line drive than a towering fly. Sprinting out of the batter’s box, Carroll did not think it was enough.
But the ball kept carrying at Chase Field in Phoenix, landing in the front row of the left-field bleachers, No. 20 on the season, putting Carroll, 24, on a 46-plus home run pace, not that such things matter in the middle of June, if at all.
In his third full season, Carroll’s power is not a secret. He has had it in some form since his high school days in Seattle, and it has transferred to baseball’s highest level. But there is still something amazing about seeing someone listed at 5-foot-10, 165 pounds, muscling balls over the fence the opposite way.
As he rounded the bases last Friday, he moved into fifth on this season’s home run leaderboard. The four ahead of him at that point — the New York Yankees’ Aaron Judge, the Seattle Mariners’ Cal Raleigh, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani and the Philadelphia Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber — outweighed him by an average of 74 pounds.
After the game, manager Torey Lovullo said that unlike last season, when Carroll got off to a slow start, he is not missing the pitches he is looking to square. “There’s a ton of bat speed in there,” he added.
There are several ways to describe Carroll. Pitcher Ryne Nelson went with “physical.” Damion Easley, the assistant hitting coach, called him a “walking muscle.”
His signature play is not the home run but the triple. When he hits a ball into the gap, nearly everyone is thinking three bags. After a triple Thursday night, his nine triples led the major leagues. (Over his first three full seasons, Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki, similar in size to Carroll, had 24 triples; Carroll has 33 and counting.)
Rick Huegli witnessed this firsthand when he worked with Carroll at Lakeside School in Seattle. A former strength and conditioning coach at the University of Washington, Huegli noted that there are various ways to measure explosiveness, but one method is through a standing vertical jump. During his high school days, Carroll leaped an impressive 36 inches.
Not long after, Huegli began telling people Carroll might be among the five most impressive athletes he had been around, whether in high school or college. He compared him with a former Washington running back named Napoleon Kaufman, who played for the Huskies from 1991-94 and became a first-round NFL draft choice, playing six seasons with the Oakland Raiders.
“Napoleon was a legit 5-8, 5-9, he could bench-press 430 pounds,” Huegli said by phone. “A state champion sprinter. He could suck the air out of the stadium every time he touched the ball. And again, the components of explosiveness, that fast twitch with athletic ability, Corbin has it. Similarly to Napoleon.”
Another thing Huegli noticed about Corbin: his drive, which he found uncommon. At Lakeside, the strength staff stored the school’s prowler sleds in a storage room inside the gymnasium. Athletes could use the sleds, pushing them with varying weights, speeds or both. But they could not be pushed on the hardwood floors of the gym. They had to be relocated to a turf field, 100 yards away and uphill.
Carroll transferred everything himself, carrying the sled and the 45-pound bumper plates, a task that required five or six trips. This is the story Huegli tells when asked what made Carroll different.
“Not every kid does that,” he said.
In 2023, the year Carroll started in the All-Star Game in his hometown and won National League rookie of the year, he hit 25 home runs. Last year, he rallied after the slow start and finished with 22.
This season, he said, he feels as though he has been hitting balls hard, with launch angles ranging from 20 to 35 degrees. Most of his home runs early this season were to the pull side, something he would like to get back to doing. His last two homers, both to the opposite field, had exit velocities below 96.5 mph, which ranked among the lowest of his career.
Carroll could not recall when he first realized his power. It has just always been there.
“I guess I’ve never tried to put a limit on myself,” he said. “I’ve always tried to work on every part of my game, hitting for power would be no exception. I got a belief that I can damage the baseball, so I always want that to be a part of my game. I feel like that’s when I’m at my best.”
Baseball numbers are difficult to project. Line drives are run down. A hot bat turns cold. Pitchers learn from mistakes. (Indeed, after hitting his 20th homer, Carroll was 0 for 9 in his next 10 plate appearances against San Diego, striking out six times.) Still, trying to approximate Carroll’s power potential is a fascinating exercise. Easley says 35-plus is realistic, but recent history suggests 40 would be difficult for a player of Carroll’s size.
Over the last 20 years, 59 players have hit 40 or more home runs in a season. Of that group, only three have weighed less than 200 pounds — Marcus Semien (who topped 40 homers in 2021), Alex Bregman (2019) and Alfonso Soriano (2006).
Carroll is not concerned about such things.
“My mindset is kind of if I can hit one a week, then I can look up at the end of the year and be in a pretty good spot,” he said. “Anything additional to that is kind of just a bonus. I’m not trying to be a power hitter. I want to be a good hitter and hit a bunch of balls hard on the line. If they go, they go.”
Easley said when he first met Carroll in 2022, he thought he was a slasher — someone who hits doubles, triples and gets on base — “which he is,” Easley said, but he did not realize Carroll’s line drives often leave the park. Asked if he had played with anyone of similar size and skill over his 17 big league seasons, Easley looked down for about 10 seconds. José Reyes, a teammate with the New York Mets, could run like Carroll, he said, but he did not have that kind of power. The same goes for Juan Pierre, a teammate of the then-Florida Marlins.
“Man, that’s a tough one,” Easley concluded.
Asked the same question, Lovullo, who played parts of eight major league seasons, mentioned Brian Giles, a teammate in Cleveland, but the more he talked about the 5-foot-11 outfielder, who was thicker than Carroll, the more he talked himself out of it.
“I want to believe Corbin is a little bit different,” Lovullo said. “He’s one of one. I’ve known him now for several years. How hard he works, he’s jacked. He’s got some God-given ability combined with this incredible drive that helps him create some amazing torque. He’s dynamic with his legs, his ability to chase balls down, hit for power. It’s a full complement of tools. There’s not a lot of them like that.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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