Corbin Carroll Wins NL Player of the Week Award

The Diamondbacks sensational rookie keeps going from strength to strength

Corbin Carroll is taking the National League by storm, just don't expect him to get outwardly excited about it. The 22 year old rookie phenom has been playing like one of the best players in the league this year.  Not only is he the front runner for the NL Rookie of the year award, and currently ranked 5th in the NL Outfield All Star voting, but now he has an NL Player of the Week award under his belt as well. He went 13 for 26, .500 with four homers, ten runs, nine RBI, and three stolen bases for good measure.

As a media throng 20 deep in front of his locker pressed in on him he sseemed to be taking it all in stride. Asked how it felt to win the award, his answer was about the team and his teammates.  "It feels good, we got back from a successful road trip, everyone healthy , good road trip".  That's typical Carroll, talk about the team, talk about his teammates, down play his own accomplishment. With this young man it's always very genuine. 

Asked if it was hard to stay even keeled and not get too excited over the the honor, he thought for a moment, and then flashed big smile and laugh and said "No..........I said yesterday I had a good week and got some pitchers this week, there will be plenty of weeks where it's the other way around. I've learned the best thing for me personally is just staying the course  and staying within my process has helped me even out those high's and lows."

While he's been especially hot lately, in truth  Carroll has been filling up the box score all season long. His current batting line is .308/.389/.579,  .968 OPS. He has 13 homers, 47 runs scored, 33 RBI, and 19 stolen bases with just two caught.  While "on pace" is not usually a great way to project future performance, a 32 homer, 47 steal season with  117 runs scored is the current extrapolation.  Even a moderate, heavily regressed ZIPS projection has him finishing with 25 homers and 35 steals.  While still impressive, that feels like a projection that has not caught up to the reality of the player. 

In fact, watching him every day, it's clear this is a player that works incredibly hard to improve his game on a daily basis. He has the ability to take the experience he's gaining and unleash his physical skills on top of that knowledge. One striking example is his plate discipline. Last year Carroll struck out 31 times (27%) and walked just eight times in his first 115 plate appearances.  As the season got underway he failed to draw a single base on balls in his first 16 games, 60 PA, while striking out 15 times, or 25%

Since then however he's walked 26 times and struck out just 34 in 193 PA. That comes out to a 13.5% walk rate and 17.6% strikeout rate.  Compare that to the MLB averages of  8.7%  and 22.7% respectively and it's stunning to realize just how mature the 22-year-old rookie's approach has become in just a couple of months. If he continues with this level of plate discipline, the lofty "on pace" numbers mentioned above may just be a stepping stone to much higher production levels. 

Manager Torey Lovullo called Carroll this morning to inform him of the award. As usual,  Carroll's response was low key. "When I called him to congratulate him I talked about the hard work and the perseverance and the belief that he's going to go out there and execute every single day...he just said, great, thanks, I appreciate it, I'll see you about 2 O'clock later today" 

"His humbleness is one of the things that we all love about him. He's never satisfied, he's always on a search to get better, I've been saying he never wastes days. He never wastes one day learning, growing and pushing forward. This is a great honor for him. I know it's the first of many"

Towards the end of his press conference today Lovullo was asked about the first time he saw Carroll in person. He relayed a fun story, which you can listen to at either the YouTube link or the SoundCloud below,  which also has Carroll's full comments.