Is Corbin Carroll underrated, overrated or properly rated?

Few may remember the Corbin Carroll hype machine. But I will remember.

After his rookie season in 2023, the sky was the limit for Carroll, and many wondered if the eight-year, $111 million deal he had signed the previous offseason would become an all-time bargain. He set all kinds of esoteric records owing to being the “first rookie in MLB history to do X thing and steal 50 bases”— superlatives perhaps buoyed by the fact that only 19 rookies in the live ball era had even stolen 50 bases. 5.4 WAR as a rookie? The hype train had loaded up its cargo, and there was no looking back.

Corbin Carroll was seriously hyped. Has he lived up to it?

Since 2023, Carroll has been up and down; more accurate, he’s been down-up-up-down, in that order. 2024 was not a good year for Caroll, basically regressing across the board offensively. 2025 was quite a good year, though, as was the first half of 2026, when he was a legit NL MVP candidate for a few months. But now we’re back down again, as Carroll has cooled off (not way off, but a noticeable cooling) and his 2026 has approached his career averages. 

This leaves the general public with a confused opinion about Corbin Carroll. Some probably forgot to get off the hype train in 2024, others got back on said hype train at the beginning of this year when Carrol was mashing. Others still refuse to give up on calling him an overhyped speed merchant that didn’t live up the billing. 

Yet I have achieved Peak Corbin Carroll Equilibrium, realizing he is neither underrated nor overrated: he is simply properly rated, and we can all be happier if we accept it. Here’s why.

Carroll was probably overhyped, but he's still a great player

I think the hype train got off the rails for two reasons. First: Elly De La Cruz. You’re probably like “what on earth does Elly De La Cruz have to do with Corbin Carroll?” but if you remember back to 2023, Cruz and Carroll’s rookie campaigns were happening at the same time, and they both were really, really fast. And people love speed. Stealing bases is cool, legging out infield singles is cool, triples are cool, blowing through stop signs is cool. Cruz, who became quite a good hitter in 2024, was really not that in 2023; but he hit for some power and stole 35 bases in only 98 games. Carroll was doing much of the same, with even greater production. We can call this “The 2023 MLB Speedaissance”

The second reason was that the Arizona Diamondbacks made an insanely awesome run to the World Series in 2023; everyone in America got to see Corbin Caroll is the playoffs — the networks broadcasting the various rounds could lean into the Carroll hype because he was the D-Backs’ best player that year. There was, frankly, a national mobilization to make him the next thing. It was never fair to who he was as a player, and never particularly accurate relative to his production or projection. 

Models never bought the “Corbin Carroll is going to be the best player in baseball” hype at all. Looking at historical ZiPS projections from before 2024, Carroll was slated for a 120 wRC+ and a solid 4.3 WAR. Guess what: in 2024, he had a 107 wRC+ (worse, but close-ish) and 4.3 WAR exactly. Say what you will about projection models, but they do cook sometimes.

Carroll was never meant to be the best player in baseball

Carroll never really had the underlying metrics of an MVP-level player, though he has steadily improved his bat speed since his rookie year (2023, also known as the first year we started tracking bat speed heyo! We love actually complete data), which is encouraging for his long-term power projection. The problem is that bat speed has accompanied higher strikeout rates without really improving his power or contact quality. But that’s all very speculative; the reality is Carroll projected to be … pretty much this.

That’s where I’ve landed on Corbin Carroll Equilibrium: he hasn’t underperformed, he hasn’t overperformed. He’s just a good player who has played up to that standard for three of his four years in the Majors. When researching for this piece, I was looking through all kinds of historical data to see if anything suggested Carroll was better or worse than he turned out to be. But all I really found was a bunch of noise — lots of flat-ish statistical trends, stuff that didn’t really correlate or change enough to matter. There were no red flags, green flags, there honestly weren’t any flags at all. That’s the peace we can all reach together: Corbin Carroll is a really good ballplayer, he is not the best, nor is he a fraud. A really good ballplayer is what he was meant to be. 

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