D-backs call up top prospect Corbin Carroll
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It turned out to be a rapid rise for outfielder Corbin Carroll after all, as the D-backs officially called up their top prospect from Triple-A Reno for Monday night's game against the Phillies at Chase Field. Carroll will bat eighth and start in right field in his big league debut.
Carroll was selected out of Lakeside High School with the No. 16 overall pick in the 2019 Draft, and though he was young the D-backs thought he could move through their system quicker than most.
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Consider that the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the 2020 Minor League season (he participated at the team's Alternate Training Site) and shoulder surgery robbed him of all but nine games of the 2021 season, and it makes the speed of his rise all the more impressive.
Carroll opened this season with Double-A Amarillo, where he hit .313/.430/.643 and earned a midseason promotion to Reno.
The jump in level didn't slow Carroll down at all, as he was hitting .287/.408/.535 at Reno when he got the call to the Major Leagues.
"He’s clearly gone to Triple-A and gotten acclimated very quickly," D-backs GM Mike Hazen said of Carroll a couple of weeks ago. "At the end of the day, he has played in 130 Minor League games. I would be hard pressed to go back and find a player who has probably climbed through the system as a high school kid in 130 games on the precipice of the big leagues."
The D-backs, though, have always regarded Carroll as a special case, the kind of player who is mature beyond his years and able to handle the bright lights that come from playing at the highest level.
Carroll joins young outfielders Daulton Varsho, Alek Thomas and Jake McCarthy. Though he's played mostly center field in the Minors, Carroll will likely shift to a corner in the big leagues with Thomas seemingly having center locked down. Varsho, too, has proven to be an elite defender in right.
How playing time will be distributed remains to be seen, but you can bet Carroll is going to get significant time somewhere.
"He’s going to play," Hazen said two weeks ago. "We’re not going to call him up here to sit."