Corbin Carroll's Monday was already good after one game of a doubleheader. The nightcap took it to great.
Baseball’s No. 38 overall prospect continued his hot start to the season, going 3-for-3 with a double and a walk in his team’s opener, then adding a homer and another walk in the finale as High-A Hillsboro swept a doubleheader at Eugene, 6-2 and 2-0.
“He’s just exceptionally talented, honestly,” Hillsboro hitting coach K.C. Judge said on Monday night. “He’s one of the easier guys to coach because he’s so advanced for such a young age. We’ll have discussions and he’ll kind of bounce things off me that he’s working on, but really it’s just I’m in the cage, throwing to him or feeding the machine and letting him get his work in and kind of watching. He does some really special things in his swing, some things that are just innate and really special. That’s creating the environment to him to blossom in.”
Carroll was coming off a three-hit game with a homer and a triple on Sunday when he kicked off Monday in muted fashion with a first-inning walk, his fourth of an eventual seven straight plate appearances reaching base. The top D-backs prospect then reached on an infield single to second base in the second inning, roped a two-run single to left in the fourth and doubled to center in the sixth.
In the second of Monday’s twin bill, Carroll lined out to center in the first inning but walked in the third and clobbered his second home run of the season to right field in the fifth.
Over his last three games, Carroll has gone 7-for-12 with four extra-base hits, six runs scored, five RBIs and three walks.
“His sequence is one of the best I’ve seen. I’ve worked with Manny Ramirez. I was around the cage when Bo Bichette was in high school. His sequencing, he’s just super efficient. Nothing looks really rushed or high-effort. He’s just very smooth, very efficient. The ball just pops off his bat. It’s special to watch.
“How he takes pitches in games, it’s fascinating,” the hitting coach added. “He looks like he’s in position to hit any pitch which sounds elementary and obvious, but that’s a skill not every hitter has and only the high-level ones really have. They truly look like they can handle any pitch at any time. He’s never out of balance from a gather and load standpoint. He always looks ready to fire off a really good swing. I don’t know if you can teach that, and he does it.”
The D-backs snagged Carroll out of a Seattle high school with the 16th overall pick in the 2019 Draft. That summer, after starting in the Rookie-level Arizona League, he reached then-Class A Short Season Hillsboro in his debut season and posted a combined .299/.409/.487 slash line in 42 games.
“I worked with him a little bit in early (2020) camp and basically just saw him perform a little bit before the shutdown,” Judge said. “He got a ton of work in at the [alternate training site] and [instructional league] in 2020. I wasn’t there too much, wasn’t there for instructs, but I think he was super polished last year and just kind of rolled that into this year. He got some at-bats against some really good dudes at the alt site and instructs, and he’s rolling that right into the season.”
With hits in six of the seven games he’s played this season, Carroll is now batting .435/.552/.913.
Hillsboro righty Luis Frías, Arizona's No. 9 prospect, dominated on the mound in the nightcap. The right-hander went six innings and struck out nine, allowing just two hits and one walk. Frías threw 53 of his 74 pitches for strikes.