The unlikely power of Corbin Carroll, the diminutive Diamondback raking homers

New York Times

5 hours ago

PHOENIX — The ball left Corbin Carroll's bat with an exit velocity of 94.8 mph, more of a line drive than a towering fly ball. Sprinting out of the batter's box, head down, Carroll didn't think it was enough. The 24-year-old Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder thought he had clipped it.
But the ball kept carrying at Chase Field, landing in the front row of the left-field bleachers, No. 20 on the season, putting Carroll on a 46-plus home run pace, not that such things matter in the middle of June, if at all.
The most electric player in the game.https://t.co/4SLoL8HfgQ pic.twitter.com/4xl17SX9iq
— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) June 14, 2025
In his third full season, Carroll's power isn't a secret. He's had it in some form since his high school days in Seattle, and it's transferred to baseball's highest level. But there's still something amazing about seeing someone listed 5-foot-10, 165 pounds, almost always the smallest guy on the field, muscling balls over the fence the opposite way. Pound-for-pound, Carroll might be baseball's top attraction.
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We are conditioned to think of power hitters in a certain way. In 1968, the great Jim Murray of The Los Angeles Times put it like this: 'You all know what home run hitters look like — all those muscles. They might have a pot belly like Babe Ruth or legs that should have branches on them like Lou Gehrig. Some of them might look like the Washington Monument, others have biceps they might use to pull railroad cars or lift railroad wheels.'
Carroll is different. As he rounded the bases last Friday night, he moved into fifth on this season's home run leaderboard. The four ahead of him — the New York Yankees' Aaron Judge, the Seattle Mariners' Cal Raleigh, the Los Angeles Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani and the Philadelphia Phillies' Kyle Schwarber — outweighed Carroll by an average of 74 pounds. (Diamondbacks teammate Eugenio Suárez has since also moved ahead of Carroll.)
After the game, a 5-1 Arizona win, manager Torey Lovullo said that, unlike last season when Carroll got off to a slow start, Carroll isn't missing the pitch he's looking to square. He's looking to lift the ball. And of course: 'There's a ton of bat speed in there.'
There are several ways to describe Carroll. Pitcher Ryne Nelson went with 'physical.' Assistant hitting coach Damion Easley called him a 'walking muscle.' Both lead to explosiveness, which is what makes Carroll unique. His signature play isn't the home run, but the triple. When Carroll belts a ball into the gap, before he has even rounded first, nearly everyone is thinking three bags. Entering Tuesday, his eight triples matched Boston's Jarren Duran for the major-league lead. (Over his first three full seasons, Seattle's Ichiro Suzuki, similar in size to Carroll, had 24 triples; Carroll has 32 and counting.)
Rick Huegli saw this up close when he worked with Carroll at Lakeside School in Seattle. A former strength and conditioning coach at the University of Washington, Huegli said there are different ways to measure explosiveness, but one is with a standing vertical jump. During his high school days, Carroll leaped an impressive 36 inches.
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Not much later, Huegli started telling folks Carroll might be among the five most impressive athletes he'd been around, high school or college. He compared him to a former Washington running back named Napoleon Kaufman, who played for the Huskies from 1991 to 1994 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 heavy or light, fast or slow. Only thing: They couldn't 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.
On the night he hit his 20th home run, Carroll walked out of the trainer's room inside a near-empty Diamondbacks clubhouse. In 2023, the year he started in the All-Star Game in his hometown and won National League Rookie of the Year, Corbin had hit 25 home runs. Last year, he rallied after the slow start and finished with 22.
This season, Carroll said he feels like he's been hitting balls hard, with launch angles between 20 and 35 degrees. Most of his home runs early in the season had been to the pull side, something he'd like to get back to doing. Carroll's last two homers, both to the opposite field, had exit velocities below 96.5 mph, which ranked among the lowest of his career.
Carroll couldn't recall when he first realized his power. It's just always been there. 'I guess I've never tried to put a limit on myself,' he told The Athletic. '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.'
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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 went 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 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 isn't 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.'
Before Sunday's series finale with San Diego, Easley sat outside the Diamondbacks indoor batting cage. He 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 didn't 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 didn't have that kind of power. Same with Juan Pierre, a teammate with 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 5-11 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 1 of 1. 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.'
(Top photo of Corbin Carroll rounding the bases after a June 9 home run against Seattle: Zach Gardner / MLB Photos via Getty Images)