One of the most impressive full-season debuts, Corbin Carroll looked to be the franchise superstar for Arizona. After an up-and-down 2024, there are some questions about which player Carroll is. The answer is a mix. There are stats to take away from both 2023 and 2024, but Carroll put together two solid full seasons. 1st half vs 2nd half is the big debate in 2024. After a tough start, Carroll turned it around near the All-Star break and returned close to his 2023 form. Let’s dive into which Carroll we can expect in 2025.
Corbin Carroll 2024 Stats:
.231/.322/.428, 121 R, 22 HR, 74 RBI, 35 SB
Player A or Player B:
Corbin Carroll was two players during the 2024 season. The 1st half and 2nd half were two drastically different productions. In the first half of the season, Carroll hit .213 with only five home runs in 94 games. The start of the season was rough for Carroll as he hit just two home runs from April through June. Only his second full MLB season, the start of 2024 looked as if Carroll was due for a major regression. While the 2023 version of Corbin Carroll may have been best best-case scenario, 1st half of 2024 was the worst case. Carroll is somewhere in the middle ground of these two players. The 25 home runs in 2023 were a bit surprising despite him hitting 24 in 93 MilB games in 2o22. Through the first half, five home runs were certainly an overcorrection. Carroll had a shoulder injury in 2023 that limited him to 4 home runs in his last 53 games. Carroll has shown that his 20+ home run power is real but the 1st half-hitter raises concerns.
The power showed up after the All-Star break, with 17 home runs in his final 64 games. Carroll also hit .259 with 17 steals and a slightly better walk rate. A massive month of August, Carroll hit 11 of his 22 home runs in those 27 games. The second half of the year is more indicative of the player Carroll is. He ended the year with a .231 average with a .247 xBA. 17 home runs were in the month of July and August for Carroll as he found his stride mid-season. The consistent amount of stolen bases gives Carroll a high upside. Much like his power, the stolen bases came mostly in one month. Carroll tallied 13 of his 17 second half steals in September. The tools are all still plus, but the inconsistent sophomore season makes Carroll a bit tougher to trust. Still a top pick, he may fall from the top 7-8 range, to just outside the top 10.
Corbin Carroll’s Dynasty Appeal:
Coming off a 2023 where he hit 25 home runs and stole 54 bases, Carroll was regarded as a top 10 dynasty hitter. 24 years old, the young outfielder checked every box to be a top keeper for dynasty. He displayed power, speed, the above-average hit tool, and an opportunity for plus run totals hitting at the top of the order. A true 4-category player and newly 24-year-old gives him way more value in dynasty formats. Still, in that 8-15 range of hitters for dynasty formats, Carroll has plenty of career left that could justify taking him in the top 7-8 picks. 2023 will always be the year that fantasy owners will expect from Carroll, but it may just be the best we’ll see from him.
Age has a high value in dynasty formats, but it can’t be overvalued. Corbin is 24 and to me, the ~20 home runs, 30+ stolen bases, and plus plus run totals are enough to value him near the top. Add in a good walk rate, and a hopeful/expected resurgence of batting average is enough to get him into the top-five conversations. Given the down year, no one is valuing Carroll any less, and they shouldn’t. Outside of Bobby Witt Jr., Elly De La Cruz, and Fernando Tatis Jr., there aren’t many young talents that can do what Carroll can. The biggest concern is how the injuries have limited him. 2023 was the shoulder, and 2024 was his left rib cage. The rib injury in 2024 may have been what caused such a down first half. Moving forward for dynasty leagues, Carroll is one of the best picks a fantasy owner can make.
Corbin Carroll’s Re-Draft Value:
2024 may not have been the complete dominance expected from Carroll, but the 2nd half of the year restores confidence. Carroll should be valued around the 10-15 range of re-draft hitters due to the power and speed value. A year of regression still holds Carroll as one of the better fantasy bat options. The value here is slightly lower than dynasty formats, mostly due to the down and streaky 2024. The upside here is still one of the highest for four of the five counting stats.
While there isn’t much that matters outside of the year ahead, upside takes the place of age in re-draft formats. Carroll has plenty of upside and if you drafted him in the top 10 in 2024, you’re okay with the final stat line. That being said, the first half of the year was essentially a player that shouldn’t even be rostered. Players go on hot and cold streaks that can’t be predicted, but the 2024 season was more than that. As mentioned, Carroll put up a majority of steals and home runs in a one-month span. Monthly streaks can make and break a season but they are something fantasy owners live with when they draft streaky players. Moving forward, I don’t think Carroll will have this type of streakiness attached to him. His 2023 season was a product of consistency. 2025 should be more likely to match the 2023 Carroll in terms of consistency, but a mix of 2023/2024 for production. Outside of the clear top hitters, Carroll is going to be a top 10 bat that will give you plus tallies in Runs, Steals, and 20+ home runs. Personally, anyone looking to avoid Carroll could miss out on a resurgence that may combat his 2023 numbers.
I agree with a lot of what’s written here, I just don’t think it provides as significant a case for Carrol’s value as the writer thinks it does, so it makes the pick numbers skewed on a very good player that has yet to prove he’s a great one. He’s great for SB’s, and if you’re all about building a roster of the most balanced good players, rather than a balanced roster of great and good ones, go for it, but I’d be choosing Kyle Tucker (27 instead of 24, but still), as an ‘outfielder to target in the 7-15 range that had a good season but is hard to value due to an injury,’ that’s being suggested for Carroll here. Carroll would end up at least a round or two down the line. Putting him in the ranges listed here aren’t quite a “bold prediction” article-worthy sentiment, but it’s coming close, in my opinion.
With only 2 years in the league (just over 1 year of ML service time), two injuries that “explain” his issues in those 2 seasons, and around a quarter to a third of his overall playing time being pretty bad, it’s too soon to _dependably_ make any kind of claim to Carroll being worthy of a top 20 pick next season… at least as long as there aren’t any major changes to the Diamonbacks. Player development is rarely linear, and he’s still developing. Many fans think that “developing” means he’ll only get better while it happens, but they’re misguided. The offense around him also has a very high chance of being a dumpster fire next season, (except for Marte – as nearly always in AZ). Unless he’s willing to take a pay cut, Walker will end up filling a 1B slot elsewhere, as there’s a derth of bats that profile properly at the position these days, and someone is going to pay him more than the Diamondbacks’ ownership. He’s still only 33, which is surprising, considering how long it took him to get space away from Goldsmith’s shadow, and the ages of a lot of MLB current 1b’s being higher than at most positions, as players whose bats still play needing a break from more demanding positions in the field transition to it or DH.
I’m letting someone else draft him that high in _any_ format but ones that heavily weight SB. I value him a round or two above where I value Colton Cowser, mostly because he gets a huge amount of playing time for his defense in that crowded, talented O’s lineup, has a BB rate over 16%, and showed impressive pop throughout the season (with a cold spell in the middle)… plus people actually have to pitch to him. He’s not going to blow you away with speed, but he’ll provide similar value to Carroll, unless Carroll truly is 2023 whenever he’s healthy. I haven’t figured out exactly where I’ll put Cowser next season, and Carroll will certainly be ahead of him, but I have a hard time imagining either being in my top 25 overall in most redraft or keeper leagues. In dynasty, as always, it depends on how your competition has built, or generally builds, their teams. In my case, I don’t doubt someone will value him higher than I will, and that’s fine with me.
Speed & SB’s are great and all, but it’s not the aughts and teens anymore. TTO baseball is taking a backseat to more balanced attacks, so, like happened with catchers recently, you no longer have to plan to invest heavily or punt the category with no real middle ground. Targeting speed doesn’t provide as much peripheral value as targeting OPS+ or wRC+ in the 1st and 2nd rounds. It’s also the fastest tool to dissipate and lose the value you can secure long term with a power-focused player with a similar AVG at the same pick over time. As long as there are non-competitive teams, there will be players trying to get off them, or profit off of them, by pushing the running game in non-competitive matchups and situations. You can almost always get SB on the wire when needed in 10 & 12 teamers since the rules changed to increase that aspect of the game, as long as you know where to look and what to look for, even in weekly lineup leagues. I go for the best overall batting talent & k/9, K/W, & IP (on good teams) early in drafts and cobble speed together from wherever’s left later… if it hasn’t been incidentally handled already by the time I feel I need to focus on it, which is what usually happens.
I came to this article having developed a hesitancy around Carroll because of his hitting peripheral stat trends, particularly relating to power, leading to the floor we saw in the 4 of 6 months of the season (so “half” is being incredibly generous to his month plus of quality play, even if it’s in the lexicon as something else). His game was entirely different in ways injury couldn’t fully explain to my satisfaction during that 4 + month period with a hot streak at the end. For a while, I thought it had to have something to do with a new coaching approach, but it dragged on too long for that. They’d have had to have changed the approach sometime in there, while the same results were ongoing. I’m not going to research everything again to explain in detail, but I made a choice to drop him from keeper to wire when ending up with an injured Tucker mid-season, and I don’t regret it for the long run. Of course, it wasn’t great for _this_ season when he took off again, but he’s lost the linear, upward track that made him tantalizing for his age (like Witt still has, for clarification). It made me think that the first season, while not entirely a fluke, may very well be beginner’s luck to some extent. His BABIP dropping from around .330-.250 wasn’t all bad luck for an entire season. He was able to pay less for his weaknesses at the plate in ’23 because, for various reasons, his opposition had a hard time building a book on him at first. They eventually figured it out over the ’23 offseason, and he adjusted at the very end, but it took him a looooong time to make whatever change he needed to.
I read this article because I hoped to be proven wrong in my worries about Carroll, or at least to find out something other than what anyone can read on his stat & split pages on a variety of websites. I don’t see strong support for the position, “The second half of the year is more indicative of the player Carroll is,” in this piece. First of all, it wasn’t the second half of the year, it was two months out of six. If he had said “the second half of the season,” a phrase that uses the lexicon that includes the fake definition for “half,” I wouldn’t be nitpicking as much. All I really see as support of this is a stat selection that indicates that the “second half” of the ’24 season was a lot like ’23, which is obvious to everyone who paid attention, and doesn’t really require an article to point out. What I was hoping to see, and what would convince me to believe the first half was an injury related problem, or something of that nature, was a comparison of physical approaches in the box, how hiccups of this sort have happened to him in the minors and were then adjusted to quickly after initial adjustments took a long time, or really anything that compares the two extreme stat time periods to each other with something visibly or explicably different in the way he was handling early ’24.
You know what else was happening on the Diamondbacks the second half? Other people were hitting. Just like they were in ’23, and the D-Backs miracled their way into the WS. When he’s not injured and on the field and NO ONE is putting up any runs, it’s not exactly tough to decide to pitch in and out of the shadow zone around a guy that’s pushing for a hit (and has a walk rate of 10%), when the rest of the team doesn’t make you pay for it.
All in all, there are more dependable bats to invest that kind of draft capital in. I have no doubt that he’ll run with the best of ’em, _and_ have streaks where his power flares, but I’m not buying a ticket for this particular train’s premium seating until it arrives in another city, AZ shows that it’s willing to seriously compete with the Dodgers or Padres and invest in their roster, or he puts together another full season or two worthy of a top, IDK, 15 pick?
Until they’re ready to play with the big dogs, there will be an air of imbalance with their competition in the clubhouse that can’t help but wither confidence and performance through a 162 game season, regardless of the possibilities of the expanded playoff format.
I’m not quite sure why someone would waste the opportunity to use their first couple of picks for players on a team that will automatically give them extra RBI’s, W’s, etc., especially after there were _serious_ problems for most of the year prior. I have suspiscions that people are going to treat Carroll like the perreniall slow-starting Lindor next year and ruin their chances. Unless they’re already seen as perennial MVP or Cy Young candidates, or are young guys with _continual_ track records of improvement AND excellence, I’m not picking players from low-budget, 3rd place or worse teams in the first round or two (if I can help it).
Yes, sophomore swoons seem to be an actual phenomenon from time to time, but the Diamondbacks are chronically bad and cheap, not a team on the rise (12th ranked farm), and the far more common occurrence is a person of any talent level being or becoming unable to hit MLB pitching. Failing 2/3rds of the time is a good average in baseball, after all.
get a life dude