Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
At 13-16, the Arizona Diamondbacks have started their season with something of a whimper. The biggest reason for that, in my opinion, has been the performance of Corbin Carroll, who’s gone from winning Rookie of the Year and finishing fifth in MVP voting last season to hitting just .189/.295/.236 (60 wRC+) with just one home run over 122 plate appearances. There are a couple of silver linings — he’s swiped eight bases despite his struggles and has struck out just 21 times to go along with his 15 walks — but frankly, it’s mostly been a disaster for a guy who should be playing like what he is: the most talented all-around player on the National League’s reigning pennant-winning team.
Firstly, I’ll acknowledge that Carroll perhaps overperformed last year. His batting average, slugging percentage, and wOBA were all notably higher than his expected marks, and his barrel, hard-hit, and sweet-spot rates were all in the 51st percentile or lower. Then again, his .268 xBA, .441 xSLG, and .370 xwOBA were all at or above the 65th percentile — meaning he still would’ve been solid hitter if those were his actual statistics. Moreover, with his first full season behind him, we could have reasonably expected him to improve his skills, and thus his production, as he gained experience. So far, that hasn’t been the case. He’s been downright dreadful at the plate.
Carroll’s top-level approach is good: He’s not swinging and missing (80th percentile whiff rate) or striking out (81st percentile strikeout rate), and he’s taking his walks (84th percentile walk rate). But there’s only so much value a hitter can provide by walking and making contact if his quality of contact is abysmal, and, well, that’s pretty much the only way to describe it. His 30th-percentile barrel rate is actually his best quality of contact marker, with his percentiles for average exit velocity, hard-hit rate and sweet-spot rate all amazingly in the fourth percentile or lower. He’s basically hitting the ball with the authority of Steven Kwan and Luis Arraez; that can be totally fine for a hitter if he has the bat control that those two have (which leads to elite sweet-spot percentages), but Carroll doesn’t have that, making him punchless at the plate.
On average, Carroll is hitting the ball nearly five mph softer than he did last year. Along with that, his groundball rate has increased by nearly five percentage points. For Carroll, who has as much speed as anyone in baseball, putting the ball on the ground is far from the worst thing, but that spike in worm-killers has come at the expense of his power. Last season, he hit 25 home runs, 30 doubles and 10 triples; one homer and two doubles are his only extra-base hits this year. When a hitter loses this much punch despite being in his early-20s, the focus, understandably, will turn to injury.
Carroll has a history of scary shoulder problems, forcing him to have surgery when he was in the minors and causing him to leave a couple of games last season after painful swings. But I haven’t noticed any wincing or grimacing in the Carroll plate appearances I’ve seen this year, and he hasn’t been lifted from the lineup because of his shoulder. If there are residual issues, Carroll is keeping them private. Instead, he’s theorized that his working to cut down on strikeouts has created a deeper point of contact, which has made it harder for him to get out in front of pitches and drive them. That’s borne out in the data; his overall pull rate is down from 38.4% to 33.7%, and he’s pulling just 6.5% of fly balls compared to 27.2% last year. This very well could be the root of his struggles: Carroll doesn’t have otherworldly raw power, so if he’s going to tap into the pop he does have — as he did last year — he’s going to need to start pulling the ball in the air again. If that means taking bigger cuts and whiffing a bit more as a result, then that’s a worthy tradeoff for him to get back to being the offensive force we know he can be.
**On George Kirby and Command vs. Control**
George Kirby is a fantastic pitcher, and one of my favorites to watch. The degree to which he limits walks is so unprecedented in this era that it’s almost comical.
Interference is a judgment call and thus is not reviewable, but interestingly, crew chief Andy Fletcher said after the game that he believed his crew missed the call, describing the hand raising as “an unnatural part of his slide.”
[image: BLOCKED BY JUDGE]
