Inside Corbin Carroll's extension

This story was excerpted from Steve Gilbert’s D-backs Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

The D-backs made a big move over the weekend, signing outfielder Corbin Carroll to an eight-year contract extension. So, with that in mind, here are some frequently asked questions and my attempts at answers.

What makes Carroll the right player to tie up long term?

When teams sign younger players to contract extensions, there are two things in which clubs have to be confident.

One is obviously the talent of the player and with Carroll, that’s obvious. Equally important is that the club has to believe in the character and work ethic of the player.

Anyone who has spent any time at all around Carroll knows his dedication and attention to detail won’t change with the contract. This is someone who, in his opening remarks at the press conference to announce the signing, remembered to thank the workers who cook the food for the players each day at Salt River Fields.

Will having a contract put pressure on Carroll?

Maybe, but it also could have the opposite effect. When the D-backs signed Paul Goldschmidt to a five-year, $32 million contract, a deal that he wound up outperforming, Goldschmidt said he never regretted signing it.

What no one took into account, Goldschmidt said, was whether having financial security may have actually helped relax him and allow him to perform at an elite level.

In addition, Carroll, ranked as the No. 2 prospect in baseball by MLB Pipeline, has dealt with being one of the top-ranked prospects in baseball the past couple of years. He’s used to the attention and expectations, and he has navigated them well.

How hard was it for the two sides to come to an agreement?

There were a lot of challenges to putting this deal together, given that there’s not a lot of precedent for contracts for someone with such little big league service time.

“I don’t think there are really that many players out there where clubs look at them and say, this is the player I want to attach a contract like this to,” Carroll’s agent Joe Urbon said. “Certainly there are long-term deals, but this is a record-setting deal for a player with basically a month of service. It’s uncharted waters, frankly, for all of us.”

Urbon said there were times when the negotiations “got intense,” but, in the end, they were able to find a structure that worked for both parties.