Corbin Carroll Is Trying To Join A Club That Has Only Four Members

Forget Shohei Ohtani or Juan Soto or Freddie Freeman. Forget Pete Crow-Armstrong or Kyle Schwarber or Pete Alonso. Shockingly, as of Monday night, the National League leader in extra base hits is none of the above. Rather, when Labor Day Weekend ended, the man leading the league in that category was Corbin Carroll, the diminutive (by baseball standards) right fielder playing for the underwhelming Arizona Diamondbacks.

If this answer is surprising, consider that he has the fewest number of plate appearances of all the players listed above, and that he most certainly doesn’t present the same type of existential threat every time he steps to the plate.

Carroll just goes about his business, trying to become the fifth player in MLB history to have at least twenty doubles, twenty triples, twenty homers, and twenty stolen bases in a single season. If he were able to do it (he needs four more triples), he would join this illustrious club:

• Frank “Wildfire” Schulte, who accomplished the feat in 1911 for the Chicago Cubs. He had 20 doubles, 21 triples, 21 home runs, and 23 stolen bases.
• A center fielder from New York named Willie Mays. When he did it in 1957, he had 26 doubles, 20 triples, 35 dingers, and 38 stolen bases.
• It took another fifty years, and then in 2007, two players did it: Curtis Granderson for the Tigers and Jimmy Rollins for the Phillies. Granderson went 38/23/23/26, while Rollins clocked in with 38, 20, 30, and 41.

Here is where Carroll stands with 23 games to go: 27 doubles, 16 triples, 29 homers, 23 stolen bases. And he is doing all that while hitting just .258. By contrast, when Schulte did it, he hit .300. Mays hit .333. Granderson finished with a .302 average, while Rollins is the only player to accomplish the feat while hitting below .300 – he hit only .296. Can Carroll do it by hitting 40 points lower?

If he does, it won’t be because he has some amazing BABIP. When Schulte became the club’s charter member, he had a .313 BABIP to go with his .300 batting average. Mays, surprisingly, had a BABIP (.324) lower than his batting average (.333). Granderson had a remarkable .360 BABIP, while Rollins only had four points of differential between his BA (.296) and his BABIP (.300). But Carroll’s is a mere .296, which is just slightly ahead of the MLB average of .291.

One thing in Carroll’s favor is his incredible quickness. He is one of the fastest players in baseball, with a sprint speed of 29.8 feet per second, which is ninth among active players (and just 0.5 seconds off Trea Turner’s league-leading number).

Further, he packs a whole lot into his 5’10”, 165-pound frame. His xSLUG (expected slugging percentage) is in the 96^th percentile; his barrel percentage is in the 92^nd percentile; his average exit velocity is in the 89^th percentile; and his hard-hit percentage is in the 87^th percentile. He is able to pull this off because his bat speed is also in the 87^th percentile. There may be no player who does more with less and does it all at an elite level.

As stated above, to get admission to the club, Carroll will need four more triples. He did that in April and had five in July. He had only two in August, and they were in the same game (August 19^th against the Guardians). With the second triple that day, he set the Diamondbacks’ single-season record. It is also the most three-baggers anyone has had in a season since Jose Reyes tallied 19 in 2008. If Carroll is able to achieve a “quadruple veinte,” he will pass Reyes and match Mays and Rollins. However, it will take quite a “feet” of speed and ball placement for him to catch Granderson’s 23 triples in 2007.

Regardless, Corbin Carroll is giving Arizona baseball fans something to root for in the season’s final month.