The Diamondbacks are gaining national headlines for how quickly they’ve turned around their season. Star players such as Bryce Harper and Triston Casas have both praised Arizona for their play this month, raising the national profile of a team that had won a National League pennant last season. They’ve won 24 of their last 30 games and are in the driver’s seat to clinching another postseason berth.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!One of the issues that plagued them early in the season was a prolonged slump from outfielder Corbin Carroll. Carroll went on The Burns & Gambo Show on Arizona Sports to talk about the slump and how both he and the team have rebounded.
“Baseball is a hard game and it’ll knock you down and I think that’s also part of what I love about it though, right? Right, yeah. You can never feel too, you know, this game will catch you. So I’d say I’d just say yeah, it can get you at unexpected times. You know, got caught there but you know, like you said, it was kind of able to make some adjustments there. You know, some lessons learned.”
It’s lessons that all major league players learn early in their careers. For his entire playing career, Carroll had excelled in every facet of the game entering the 2024 season. He was a first round pick in the 2019 season, then became a consensus Top 5 prospect entering the 2023 season, and cruised to a Rookie of the Year Award with a 25 home run and 50 stolen base season. However, the Diamondbacks were comfortable that their superstar outfielder had the makeup to continue to grind and improve every day, but would eventually turn it around. That’s why they handed him a nine-figure extension just 32 games into his MLB career.
“I just want to be consistent. I want to do something every day, so it sucked when I wasn’t going to put myself in the best position to do that. So now I would just say that being back in a space where I feel like I’m doing what I want to do and in that regard and being able to help the team, like you said scoring some runs, grabbing some guys in, playing some defense, it feels good and I just want to stay consistent there.”
Entering play on June 5, Carroll was hitting .192 with just two home runs and a .561 OPS. Since then, he’s batting .250 with 12 home runs and a .838 OPS. He’s reached in 34 straight starts, with Arizona boasting a 28-6 record in those games. He set a franchise record for most consecutive starts scoring a run with 14, and he is second in the National League in runs scored for the 2024 season.
The Athletic published a piece on the Diamondbacks’ spark plug at the top of the order, noting the correlation between his OPS and the team’s winning percentage. In each month of the season, Carroll’s OPS has gone up, with the team’s winning percentage going up along with it, with the biggest jumps coming in July. For the month of August, he has a .914 OPS and the team has a .773 winning percentage.
The big moment that started to turn things around and give the Diamondbacks the belief that no deficit is too much to overcome was on July 29. Trailing by six runs entering the bottom of the seventh, Arizona rallied to score seven runs in the final three innings to win 9-8 on Carroll’s walk-off homer off Kyle Finnegan. That’s been the new expectation for the Diamondbacks, a team that never gives up and fights until the last out. Twice already in August, they’ve rallied from down four runs against All-Star pitchers Paul Skenes and Tanner Houck to win the game.
While Carroll’s improvement at the plate is its own story, the ability of the Diamondbacks to get the most out of their depth has been instrumental in keeping their season alive. Players such as Kevin Newman, Jake McCarthy, and Adrian Del Castillo rightfully get praised for stepping in and keeping the machine going despite their best players seeing lengthy stints on the injured list. Without those guys, Arizona might not be in the position they are today.
“Injuries are just part of baseball. It is what it is. You hate to see your brother go down, but you’re right. We’ve done a great job of, with the players that have come in and filled those roles, they’ve played exceptionally well. It’s been like you said, a bunch of our best players have been on the show. To be able to play the way that we’re playing right now without Marte, Walker, Moreno, it just makes me even more excited to let those guys come back and get healthy.”
Now that Carroll has turned his season around at the plate, the Diamondbacks boast one of the toughest lineups in baseball. They have so many weapons offensively they can use to wear and break down the opposing defense and the pitcher. They grind out at-bats, always willing to hand it off to the next hitter if they don’t get the pitch they want and capable of slugging the pitches they do. They can exploit weaknesses in the opposing defense with their speed, forcing them to make plays to get them out. If opposing teams give them a tiny opening, they’re going to kick the door in and put up a crooked number. That’s why they’re averaging more than 6.5 runs per game since July.
Not only is this team capable of blowing out teams that don’t play fundamentally solid baseball, they’re capable of grinding out low-scoring games. The pitching had been an issue all season, but the rotation is rounding back into shape. Zac Gallen had an encouraging outing against the Boston Red Sox. Merrill Kelly and Eduardo RodrÃguez are healthy and getting their proverbial legs underneath them after lengthy stints on the injured list. Youngsters Brandon Pfaadt and Ryne Nelson have stepped up to provide huge innings to keep the rotation afloat.
On top of that, they have an electric trio of arms in the back of their bullpen that can shut down an opposing lineup. Justin Martinez started the year in Triple-A, but is threatening to take over the closer role on a full-time basis with six straight converted save opportunities. A.J. Puk is looking like one of general manager Mike Hazen’s shrewdest trades, a high-octane left-hander with a 38.8% strikeout rate in 13 games with Arizona. Kevin Ginkel, who was the most dominant reliever in the 2023 postseason, has picked up right where he’s left off, taking on the “fireman” role in the bullpen where he comes in for shutdown situations.
“Yeah, I think we’ve just got a team that can beat you in a bunch of different ways. The way that we’re playing right now, we’re scoring a bunch of runs and getting some teams out of some ball games early. But I think we’re also a team that knows how to play a tight game late, score a run to, break ahead late in the games and stuff like that.”
The Diamondbacks will be in for a heat check this week, as they’ll be tested by two teams with playoff aspirations. How they fare this week could ultimately decide their path to the postseason, either as a Wild Card team or perhaps winning the National League West division for the first time since 2011.
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The Diamondbacks boast one of the toughest lineups in baseball
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Michael McDermott covers the Arizona Diamondbacks, Arizona Cardinals, and more for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on X via @MichaelMcDMLB
