'Failure has definitely shaped me': Why D-backs believe Corbin Carroll will be better than ever in 2025

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- For as many as 17 weeks last season, Corbin Carroll felt lost. He often wondered if he'd get sent down to the minor leagues. At times, he doubted he'd ever be good again.

Carroll had breezed through the Arizona Diamondbacks' system in 2022, taken Major League Baseball by storm as a 22-year-old in 2023 and entered 2024 already regarded as one of the game's best players. Then, for four months, Carroll -- a unanimous choice for the National League Rookie of the Year Award just a season earlier -- became one of the worst hitters in the sport. He had never failed in baseball before, and then failed continuously with the spotlight cast directly on him. The perfectionism and dedication that had elevated him to the top of his profession, despite being younger and smaller than most of his peers, was suddenly causing him to spiral.

That he rebounded the way he did, surging through August and September and somehow finishing with respectable numbers -- 22 homers, 35 steals, a .749 OPS and four FanGraphs wins above replacement -- makes those around him think he'll be better for it. And as the D-backs approach another season with high expectations, there is a belief that Carroll might have unlocked the best version of himself.

"Failure has definitely shaped me," Carroll said. "And I think that some of my favorite aspects about myself have come from my responses to failure."

CARROLL POSTED AN .868 OPS, accumulated 25 homers and 54 stolen bases, generated four outs above average in right field and starred through a World Series run in his first full season. But he saw aspects of his swing and approach that required improvement. He set out to cover the fastball up and the cutter in, areas where he felt pitchers might try to expose him. But his attempts to improve merely triggered regression. His stride grew too long, his upper half became too rotational and his swing got too flat. A house of cards collapsed.

"I think '23 was a great year, and coming away from it -- I always have a growth mindset," Carroll, 24, said. "I always wanna get better, and it was exactly that question: How do I get better? Even thinking back, it made sense what I was thinking -- strike out less, walk more, cover my biggest holes. But everyone will talk about how you can't let working on your weaknesses take away from your strengths; whatever you lose, you have to gain as much. It was taking away from what I did well, and it still wasn't what I wanted to do."

Carroll homered once and slashed just .188/.261/.248 in the month of April. By the end of it, D-backs general manager Mike Hazen was concerned enough about the state of Carroll's confidence that he met with him during a trip to Seattle. Hazen's message: It's going to be fine. You're too good not to figure this out. Your track record is no fluke.

But May wasn't much better. Carroll slashed .202/.270/.343, by which point the D-backs -- billed as legitimate contenders after adding Jordan Montgomery, Eduardo Rodríguez, Eugenio Suárez and Joc Pederson to a team that fell three wins shy of a championship -- sat seven games below .500. In June, Carroll didn't hit a single home run.

The D-backs intermittently tried Carroll near the bottom of their lineup, hoping that it would spark him, but it didn't. They toyed with the idea of moving him off center field and back to his more comfortable position in right, but Alek Thomas' hamstring strain made that almost impossible. They often talked about giving him days off to reset, but the dynamics of their lineup -- Thomas and Geraldo Perdomo hurt, Suárez and Gabriel Moreno struggling -- provided little margin for error. Sending him to the minor leagues, even for a temporary morale boost, was widely dismissed as counterproductive.

"We've always talked about this in player development -- it's almost a blessing in disguise when players fall on their face in the minor leagues, because they gotta figure out a way to pick themselves up when it's not the brightest, shining light on them, and they kinda figure out those things," Hazen said. "And I sometimes feel like the harder ones are the ones where they don't. They get there and struggle, and then it's like, 'No no no, it's the same thing. You're just doing it under a much brighter light.'"

Carroll routinely took hundreds of swings before games, using an assortment of tees, bat sizes and hand angles in search of a feeling he could not pinpoint. When the games began, he was often exhausted. When results didn't follow, he felt dejected. Hazen could sense the struggles "bothered him on a very personal level," though he never displayed much outwardly.

Said Thomas, who was practically raised alongside Carroll in the organization: "He would always smile when I saw him, but I could tell. You could see that he was mentally being hard on himself."

Carroll eventually sought counsel from Zach Brandon, the D-backs mental-skills coach who helped him through the pressure of getting drafted 16th overall in 2019 and the disappointment of missing the next two minor league seasons, first to the COVID-19 pandemic and then to shoulder surgery. Through Brandon, Carroll learned to catch himself in the act of thinking negatively and switch his perspective. He began to view negativity as songs on a playlist, often repeating the same phrase to himself: It's just a thought. Next thought.

"As small as it sounds," Carroll said, "it just helped me not spiral."

FOR STRUGGLING HITTERS, any number of unexpected occurrences can cause a spark -- a bloop single, a break in routine or, in Carroll's case, a fresh perspective. Marlon Byrd, the retired major league outfielder who now coaches, provided it. Pederson, one of Carroll's new teammates last year, had spent much of the season working under Byrd's tutelage, often flying him out from Southern California for D-backs homestands. Carroll joined him on the morning of July 29, by which point his OPS, .651, was worse than all but 14 qualified hitters.

Something about the way Byrd delivered a message completely changed the trajectory of Carroll's season.

"I think the biggest thing that he did was he didn't try and mold himself to me," Carroll said. "Maybe a little bit more of an old-school approach, but pretty much it was, 'This is how you hit, and this is what you need to do.'"

Later that afternoon, Carroll arrived at Chase Field invigorated. He wasn't in the starting lineup, but he wound up taking somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 swings, more than he ever had before. He took part in early batting practice, followed with a visit to the batting cage, went through a workout, then returned to the cage and hit throughout the game. This time, though, he wasn't searching for a feeling. He was hoping to trap one.

When the bottom of the ninth came, the D-backs trailed the Washington Nationals by four runs but quickly stormed back, cutting their deficit to one with a runner on first and one out. Carroll was summoned to pinch hit against Nats closer Kyle Finnegan, who two weeks earlier was named to his first All-Star team. The first pitch was a splitter inside. Carroll pulled it foul but scorched it. "That felt different," he told himself. When Finnegan followed with a splitter up and away, Carroll lined it over the right-center field fence for a walk-off home run.

"That at-bat ended," Carroll said, "and I think from that point on, that was probably the turning point, I would say. Right then."

Carroll was named NL Player of the Month for August, during which he slashed .280/.342/.700 with 11 home runs and helped the D-backs lead the sport in most major offensive categories. From July 29 to the end of the season, Carroll posted a .931 OPS that ranked 10th in the majors. His batting average ended 54 points lower than the previous year, but Carroll joined Bobby Witt Jr., Elly De La Cruz and Jarren Duran as the only players with at least 20 homers, 10 triples and 30 stolen bases.

He was suddenly driving pitches into the opposite-field gap again, the result of a drill in which D-backs coaches instructed Carroll to stay inside a pitch so much that he continuously lined it into the net in front of him, almost as if cutting a cue ball. His walk rate went up and his chase rate went down, largely because Carroll and the team's hitting group boiled his pregame routine down to its most basic form -- hitting only fastballs down the middle and shrinking his strike zone by working off a smaller home plate.

"I think he learned a ton," D-backs hitting coach Joe Mather said.

Carroll learned to "cast the net a little wider" with the hitting coaches he taps into when struggles emerge, because one never knows who might deliver the right message. He learned he can't cover every pitch, and attempting to do so is futile. He learned chasing perfection can be dangerous. He learned, ultimately, "That I'm a pretty tough person to beat down."

As for what the D-backs learned about Carroll?

"Nothing," Hazen said, "other than it confirmed every ounce of belief that we had in him in the first place."

"Everything I already assumed, and I saw, it was just amplified," D-backs manager Torey Lovullo added. "Times infinity."

OVER THE OFFSEASON, Carroll sought to blend the basics that helped get him right with the curiosity that initially drove his success. It's a tricky balance, but the early signs have been positive.

In his second spring training game of 2025, Carroll produced his first-ever Cactus League home run. In his third, he hit a grand slam. In his fourth, he sent one 414 feet. He did so while holding his bat up higher, close to a 45-degree angle as opposed to flat. Carroll implemented the change last September and liked how it put his hands in a better position to fire, then spent the ensuing months refining it.

Carroll took off down the stretch last season by essentially tapping into his old self, but that's not necessarily the hitter he wants to be moving forward. He is mindful of not falling into the over-correction cycle that plagued him last summer, but it's also not in his nature to remain stagnant.

"The impact and all that was great, but my goal is for that to be as repeatable as possible, and to make sure that through the longevity of my career, I am that impactful player," said Carroll, who exited Sunday's game with what he described as minor back tightness.. "There's just a level of consistency that I want to do better."

Carroll's biggest adjustment, the D-backs believe, is a mental one. He needs to be OK with failure in a game defined by it. Not so much accepting of it, but, as Hazen put it, "not taking the 90th-percentile outcome as negative."

They admire the deep sense of responsibility Carroll feels to deliver for a small-market franchise that signed him to a $111 million extension before his first full major league season and continues to find ways to spend on its roster, most recently by signing Corbin Burnes, one of the most coveted pitchers in free agency.

But in some ways, they need Carroll to let go. To relinquish his chase for perfection.

2024 taught them that.

"I'm gonna bet pretty heavily," Hazen said, "that he did not miss out on the lesson. That's not who he is."