What history tells us about Corbin Carroll's slow start

In Corbin Carroll’s major-league debut on Aug. 29, 2022, he delivered a go-ahead, two-run double that led to the Diamondbacks’ biggest comeback win in franchise history.

Soon after, it felt like he had turned the whole franchise around, too.

CORBIN BARRELS.@corbin_carroll's first hit is a 2-run, go-ahead double! pic.twitter.com/6XMqwnegLa

— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) August 30, 2022

In 2023, Carroll became the first rookie in NL/AL history to hit 25 homers and steal 54 bases. He finished fifth in NL MVP voting. A year after the Diamondbacks won 74 games, Carroll led his team to the World Series.

But the Diamondbacks have not been the same in 2024. After dropping two of three to the Los Angeles Dodgers earlier this week, they are 14-18, four games worse than at the same point last year.

There are many factors at play in the team’s slow start. Having 10 major-leaguers on the injured list is certainly one of them. The fact that Carroll has gotten off to a slow start — so much so that manager Torey Lovullo recently moved him to the bottom third of the lineup — is another.

In 30 games to start the year, Carroll has slashed .197/.299/.248 with one homer, three doubles and eight stolen bases. Entering play on Friday, his .547 OPS ranked 164th out of 179 qualified hitters. If the Diamondbacks are going to get back on track, he will have to return to form.

Speaking with reporters after Wednesday’s game, manager Torey Lovullo already felt like Carroll had turned a corner.

“I think his day one was a couple days ago,” Lovullo said. “I think the storm is coming.”

Of course, Carroll is far from the only player to struggle in the first month or so of a season. So, what does history tell us about players who have started out like this? Let’s take a look.

Slow starts in Diamondbacks history

In Diamondbacks history, only 10 players have had an OPS at or below Carroll’s .547 (minimum 100 plate appearances) after 30 games played:

• Tony Womack: .494 (2003)
• Juan Brito: .508 (2004)
• Cody Ross: .472 (2014)
• Tuffy Gosewisch: .544 (2015)
• Nick Ahmed: .423 (2015), .530 (2016), .522 (2021)
• Jeff Mathis: .481 (2018)
• Tim Locastro: .536 (2021)
• Carson Kelly: .415 (2022)
• Seth Beer: .530 (2022)
• Jake McCarthy: .519 (2023)

Frankly, there isn’t a lot of star power here, which leads to an immediate takeaway: No Diamondbacks hitter with Carroll’s reputation has ever struggled to this degree in his first 30 games.

Of course, that does not mean that Carroll is the first highly regarded Diamondbacks hitter to struggle out of the gate. Here is a list of D-backs hitters that have a career OPS+ greater than 100 (indicating that they are, indeed, good hitters) and have also started a season with a sub-.650 OPS in their first 30 games (min. 100 PA):

• Steve Finley, .617 (2001)
• Paul Goldschmidt, .648 (2012)
• Martin Prado, .626 (2013), .649 (2014)
• Mark Trumbo, .620 (2014)
• Ketel Marte, .584 (2018)
• Christian Walker, .548 (2021)

The million dollar question, of course, is whether these hitters were able to recover from their slow starts. Here is a look at how they finished:

Player	Year	OPS after 30 gms	End-of-year OPS	Pct Chg
Steve Finley	2001	.617	.767	+24.3%
Paul Goldschmidt	2012	.648	.850	+31.2%
Martin Prado	2013	.626	.750	+19.8%
Martin Prado	2014	.649	.733	+12.9%
Mark Trumbo	2014	.620	.707	+14%
Ketel Marte	2018	.584	.768	+31.5%
Christian Walker	2021	.548	.696	+27%

In each case, the struggling D-backs slugger managed to raise his OPS by more than 10 percent over the course of the year, with Ketel Marte’s 31.5 percent jump leading the way. Granted, even a 35 percent increase would only bring Carroll’s OPS to .738, a far cry from the .868 mark he posted last year. In order for Carroll to match his OPS from last season, he would need to post an OPS in the .950 range the rest of the way. That is a tall task.

Still, it is worth noting that Carroll has better career numbers than everyone on the list except Goldschmidt, and Goldy had not yet hit his prime in 2012. Perhaps Carroll’s bounce-back could be more dramatic than theirs.

If we expand our search to the rest of the league for a moment, we find that 240 players have had an OPS at or below .550 through 30 games (minimum 100 plate appearances) since 2015. That works out to around 25 players per year on average.

In 2023, there were 24 such players. Only one of them, Atlanta Braves center fielder Michael Harris II, finished the season with an OPS above .700. After posting a .541 OPS over his first 30 games, Harris ended the year with an .808 mark. He is a particular helpful comp here, given that he won the NL Rookie of the Year Award the year prior.

How Carroll compares to other Rookies

Carroll’s slow start is different from most in that it is occurring immediately after his rookie season.

Sophomore slumps, of course, are not a new idea. A 2005 Fangraphs study found that nearly two-thirds of rookie of the year winners saw some level of decline in their sophomore seasons.

So far, Carroll certainly has. Last year’s AL Rookie of the Year winner, Gunnar Henderson, has not. Henderson is slashing .272/.336/.584 in 31 games with the Baltimore Orioles.

Of course, Carroll and Henderson are unlike most rookie of the year winners in that they won their awards unanimously, a feat accomplished by only 23 position players in major-league history before them.

That prestigious list includes seven Hall-of-Famers and several strong future Hall-of-Fame candidates, including Albert Pujols, Mike Trout and Aaron Judge. Almost every player on the list is having — or already had — a long, productive career in the majors.

So, what about them? Did any of them struggle to start their sophomore years?

Yes, but not many. Out of those 23 players, only three — Vince Coleman, Benito Santiago and Sandy Alomar — had OPS marks below .700 through 30 games of their sophomore seasons. Only Alomar had a lower OPS than Carroll at the 30-game mark (.464).

Both Alomar and Santiago, of course, were catchers, so their offense ought to be graded differently than their peers at other positions. Coleman, an outfielder, did not blossom into a great hitter like almost everyone else, with an 83 OPS+ over his 13-year career.

For your (and my) amusement, here is the full list of each position player in MLB history that has unanimously won rookie of the year, including his OPS at the 30-game mark and at the end of his sophomore season:

Player	ROTY Year	OPS after 30 games	End-of-year OPS
Frank Robinson	1956	.948	.905
Orlando Cepeda	1958	.849	.878
Willie McCovey	1959	1.090	.818
Carlton Fisk	1972	.910	.750
Vince Coleman	1985	.633	.581
Mark McGwire	1987	.957	.830
Benito Santiago	1987	.661	.643
Sandy Alomar	1990	.464	.530
Tim Salmon	1993	.786	.912
Mike Piazza	1993	.837	.910
Raul Mondesi	1994	.961	.824
Derek Jeter	1996	.804	.775
Scott Rolen	1997	.797	.923
Nomar Garciaparra	1997	.846	.946
Albert Pujols	2001	.912	.955
Evan Longoria	2008	1.182	.889
Mike Trout	2012	.822	.988
Jose Abreu	2014	.849	.850
Kris Bryant	2015	.877	.939
Corey Seager	2016	.864	.854
Cody Bellinger	2017	.820	.814
Aaron Judge	2017	1.010	.919
Yordan Alvarez	2019	.997	.877
Gunnar Henderson	2023	.920	?
Corbin Carroll	2023	.547	?

Of the 23 players before Carroll and Henderson, 17 ended their sophomore seasons with lower OPS marks than they had in their rookie seasons. In that sense, sophomore slumps have certainly existed in this group. Granted, we are using the word “slump” quite loosely here, as almost all of these guys still had great sophomore years.

It is also interesting to note that 13 of the 23 players were better in the first 30 games of their sophomore seasons than the remainder of the sophomore seasons. In other words, these players were more likely to start out hot in their first 30 games and then cool off, rather than the other way around.

Out of the group, Trout saw the biggest percent increase in his OPS from the 30-game mark to the end of his sophomore season. He had an .822 OPS after 30 games and managed to bump it up to .988 by season’s end.

Outside of the aforementioned Alomar, whose sophomore season was tainted by injury, the largest percent decrease in OPS from rookie to sophomore year belongs to Willie McCovey, who posted a 1.085 mark as a rookie and an .818 mark as sophomore.

Suffice it to say that McCovey went on to have a decent career anyway, with 64.4 career bWAR, 521 homers, a 147 OPS+ and, of course, a Hall-of-Fame selection.

As far as Carroll is concerned, the primary takeaway here is that Carroll’s rookie year put him in elite company — and that really no member of said elite group struggled to start his sophomore year in the way that Carroll has.

Of course, the fact that Carroll’s career path does not map nicely onto that of any of his unanimous ROTY predecessors hardly means that he is doomed to fail, or even that he cannot achieve the greatness that they did.

Carroll is far from the only impressive rookie even just in that 2023 National League class that has started slow in 2024.

Dodgers outfielder James Outman finished third in NL Rookie of the Year voting last year but is hitting just .173/.256/.284 in 90 plate appearances. Colorado Rockies slugger Nolan Jones, who finished fourth, has slashed a similar .170/.243/.277. Their slow starts, along with Carroll’s, remind us that player development is not a linear process.

For Carroll, however, this roadblock is unlike any he has encountered before. Throughout his professional baseball career, he has seemingly conquered each new challenge almost instantly. For that reason, betting against him now is probably a very bad idea.

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Top photo: Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports