Swings and Takes: Shouldering the burden of expectations

We have stayed positive for the most part so far in Swings and Takes, as early in the season it is hard to put much stock in the struggles of star players, but this week we are breaking that trend. The hope here is that by putting our fingers to our keyboards we reverse the trends of any struggling players we examine. Our first negative review comes for a hitter who looked like one of the rising stars in the game in his rookie year, only to struggle so far in 2024. Note that we are engaging in a bit of injury speculation this week, which is a very dangerous game, but one we will only go to when there is a lot of supporting evidence, which we believe there is in this case.


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Snake-bitten sophomore year

Corbin Carroll (OF, ARI) was our HQ100 #1 prospect in all of baseball going into the 2023 season as a true power/speed/hit combination player who looked set to be a perennial All-Star for years to come. He showed his hit/power combo in his initial 32 game sample, slashing .260/.330/.500. He followed that up by winning the Rookie of the Year in 2023, with a monster 25 HR/54 SB season that ended in a surprise World Series run for the Diamondbacks. While this looked a clean transition from prospect-dom to stardom in a way that rarely happens so quickly, Carroll has struggled massively to start 2024, with a .209/.296/.317 line in 91 games so far. Carroll’s overall contact quality has cratered so far in 2024, moving from an xISO in the 52nd percentile in 2023 to 7th percentile in 2024, and a hard-hit percentage down from 51st percentile in 2023 to 27th in 2024. While the most visible drop has occurred year-over-year, Carroll showed some warning signs even during his triumphant ROY season. While there are a lot of surface problems that can and will be pointed to, it all seems to lead back to the health of his right shoulder.

Carroll, after being drafted 16th overall in 2019, hit the ground running, dominating rookie and A-ball to the tune of a .299/.409/.487 across 42 games. He got off to a blistering start in 2021, hitting over .400 with 2 HR in his first seven games of 2021, before being ruled out for the remainder of the season with a torn right labrum. Carroll seemed to not be impacted much by this injury when he came back in 2022, dominating Double-A and Triple-A before the successful MLB debut we documented above, but the issue resurfaced in the middle of 2023. On June 29, 2023, he was slashing .290/.366/.559, on his way to another All-Star game and in the thick of the MVP discussion. That day, however, he had to leave the Diamondbacks' game against the Rays with another injury to his right shoulder. Despite the team saying at the time that his shoulder was “strong and stable,” he had another scare on July 6, leaving the game against the Mets after reaching for his right shoulder again. He had an MRI the next day but ultimately did not miss any time, playing the next day and playing almost every day for the rest of the season and through the playoffs. Whether or not it was directly because of the injury, Carroll did not have the same punch in his bat after June 29:

While those production numbers after June 29 are certainly down, they are still not terrible and definitely do not forecast Carroll’s 2024 performance. One trend within that slide, however, starts to paint the picture of what has happened so far in 2024 when shown in two ways:

 

 

We can see how Carroll’s ability to impact four-seam fastballs started to diminish slowly over the 2023 season. He peaked in this regard in May with a .505 xwOBA against four-seamers and then slowly declined until he really fell off a cliff in September, posting a .282 xwOBA against four-seamers that month. 

This is where we start to transition into looking at 2024, as Carroll is getting more four-seam fastballs than ever (36.8%, compared to 32.8% in 2023) and doing little with them. He is hitting .190 against four-seam fastballs so far in 2024 with a .317 slugging percentage, and while his expected numbers are better at a .239 xBA and .370 xSLG against four-seams in 2024, they are a far cry from his .291 xBA and .538 xSLG against them in 2023. Here is where pitchers have located four-seamers against Carroll in 2023 and 2024:

Carroll Four-Seam Fastball Location 2023 

 

We can see how pitchers have moved their average location a little more up and in to Carroll in 2024. That is likely because he has particularly struggled with four-seam fastballs up in 2024. Carroll generally crushed fastballs up in 2023, although up and in was a weakness. Another factor to look at here is how Carroll is handling high velocity up, so we broke four-seam fastballs down into 94 mph or down, average or below, and 95 mph and up, above-average. Carroll did not have any problems with velo in 2023 as we can see from these charts:

Carroll Four-Seam Fastball Heatmap <= 94 MPH 2023