“His ability to do just about anything is crazy”

The slugger couldn’t punch. This came as no surprise – if you’re hitting .600, why play a small ball? — but it bothered Corbin Carroll.

In March, Carroll, the centerpiece of the upstart Arizona Diamondbacks, agreed to an eight-year, $111 million contract, with a ninth-year team option. It was the biggest guarantee ever for a player with less than 100 days of major league service, and while bunting wasn’t the reason, of course, Carroll’s desire to bunt explained a lot.

The Diamondbacks had started more bunting last season, so the practice drills trickled down to the minors. Carroll was playing for the class AA team in Amarillo, Texas, when scout Jeff Gardner, an organizational problem solver, came to work on bunts. Carroll was terrible the first day, Gardner said, but took about 200 bunts the next day and improved.

Carroll finished the 2022 season in the majors, having hit 24 home runs with a .611 slugging percentage in the minors. During the winter, when he visited the Diamondbacks’ training complex in Scottsdale, Ariz., he asked Gardner if he could punch a little more. They worked together for five or six sessions, hundreds and hundreds of tries.

“And pretty soon he had Alek Thomas with him, he had Jake McCarthy with him,” Gardner said, naming two other young Arizona outfielders. “He dragged these guys with him. The thing is, he wanted them all to get better too, because he wants to win. And I thought, for a young kid, that was great.”

Just two years after the Diamondbacks faltered to 110 losses — the most in the National League since 2004 — Carroll has led the team to the top of the NL West standings. Through Tuesday, he hits .293 with 17 home runs and 23 stolen bases, en route to becoming the first 30-30 player in club history. He looks likely to be the first rookie of the year winner for the only major league team never to have one.

“His ability to do just about anything is insane, and he’s way beyond his years, which really stands out when you talk to him,” said Joe Mantiply, a Diamondbacks reliever. “I always try to put myself in the shoes of the front office a little bit: what kind of man would I want to be the face of my franchise? He checks all those boxes.

Mantiply was the Diamondbacks’ lone All-Star in Los Angeles last season, as Arizona finished 74-88. Carroll – a finalist for a starting spot in the NL outfield – will almost certainly make it this season in his hometown of Seattle, which will be held on July 11.

“That definitely puts a smile on my face,” Carroll said before a recent game in Milwaukee. “There is still a lot of work to be done — not just until the game; I am determined to make this another nine years, but it would mean a lot to me.

Carroll, 22, has never taken the field at T-Mobile Park; the closest he came was a pass onto the field for batting practice a few years ago. He grew up with the Mariners, but by the time he played at Lakeside School – the Seattle school where Bill Gates met Paul Allen – he had paid attention to others with similar skills.

One of those players, he said, was the Brewers’ Christian Yelich, also a left-handed outfielder. Yelich won a batting title and had a 44-homer, 30-steal season in 2019, the year Carroll was drafted by Arizona in the first round. Yelich has noticed Carroll’s ascent.

“I would say we have some similarities, but he’s definitely better than I was at that age, that’s for sure,” Yelich said. “He’s really well-rounded, and the way the game evolves, especially with the new rules, those multi-dimensional players are going to be more and more coveted because they can influence the game in so many ways.”

Only three players have played 30-30 seasons at age 22 or younger: Ronald Acuña Jr., Alex Rodriguez, and Mike Trout, who was a rookie for the Los Angeles Angels in 2012. Gardner, a former major league infielder , said he thinks of a young trout when he looks at Carroll now: they are both so skilled that they will somehow stand out every game.

Torey Lovullo, the manager of the Diamondbacks, was coaching for Boston when Mookie Betts arrived in the majors. Carroll is 5 feet 10 inches and 180 pounds, about the same height as Betts with a similar set of tools, but Lovullo made a more nuanced comparison.

“Mookie would talk about limitations and try to figure out how he was going to go through that limitation,” Lovullo said. “There was a plan for every day with Mookie, and it definitely overlapped with Corbin. In ’21, when he had shoulder surgery, he was on a crusade to find out: How do I get through this? What am I going to do with all this downtime? I don’t know how many games he came to, but every time I looked up he was there.”

Because of the shoulder injury – after just seven games in first-class A Hillsboro (Ore.) – Carroll spent that 2021 season in Arizona. After daily shoulder rehab, he would go to Chase Field and sit with Gardner in the scout seats behind home plate. In a year of misery for the Diamondbacks, their future star paid close attention to the intricacies of the game.

“As a minor leaguer, I feel like there’s a perception of big leaguers, you hold them on this pedestal like they’re ideal and perfect,” Carroll said. “Just looking at big league players who make mistakes and their different reactions to them, it seemed like the best players were the ones who learned from them and didn’t take that into the rest of that game, into the rest of the game.” series. That was pretty powerful for me.

As they watched games together, Gardner shared stories and stats with Carroll — a tip from an old teammate, Bruce Hurst, to never let a pitcher know when he’s frustrating you, and data from an iPad on spin rates and catch odds and exit rates . They studied jars and devised an approach for each.

“In his mind,” Gardner said, “he probably had a thousand at bats that year.”

Officially, Carroll has had about 400 at bats in the majors. Only one has produced a bunt single. But if he needs it, at least he knows what to do. Carroll owes it to himself – and to the team that invested his future in him.

“I’m gifted with a natural ability, more than a little bit,” he said. “And I just see it as my role every day to try to maximize it.”