| | | | Thursday, September 19, 2024 | | As I continue my breakdown of some of the most interesting names at the outfield position with an eye on 2025 – I covered Jackson Chourio and Brent Rooker's 2025 outlooks earlier this week – we come to Corbin Carroll , who has had one of the wildest rides I can remember a young player having over the past year or so. | | This time last year, Carroll was putting the finishing touches on a consensus Rookie of the Year season, finished top-five in NL MVP voting, and had established himself as a candidate for the No. 1 overall pick in Fantasy. And why not? He was one of the top prospects in baseball, and he went out as a rookie and hit .285 with 116 runs, 25 homers, 76 RBI, and 54 stolen bases as a 22-year-old. He was unbelievably good, and many in Roto leagues did take him as high as No. 2 overall this season. | | Which looked like a humongous mistake for a few months. Carroll hit just .197/.282/.291 through the first two months of the season with just two homers, and he was hitting just .213 with five homers as late as the All-Star break. Rumors swirled about Carroll's health after a couple of scary shoulder injuries he played through last season, and the idea that he would be a first-rounder in 2025 looked completely far-fetched at the mid-way point of the season. | | Now? Oh, he's definitely put himself back into the discussion now. When Scott White did his way-too-early rankings for the first two rounds the other day, he had Carroll ranked 16th overall. And I certainly don't think he's going to be moving down from there after Wednesday's game that saw Carroll go 2 for 4 with two homers, including a 438-foot bomb, giving him 16 in 54 games since the All-Star break. | | | | What went wrong for Carroll earlier in the season? And how confident can we be that he's put it behind him? Well, Carroll was pretty open during the depths of his struggles about what was going wrong, something Yahoo's Jordan Shusterman wrote about back in May. | | "I was popping a lot of balls up, and like, counterintuitively, it was because my swing was too flat," Carroll told Shusterman. "My window for success was small. I was either on top of balls and hitting ground balls, or I'm under the ball, and it's popping straight up." | | Carroll worked in the offseason to increase his bat speed, and while it's true that his swing was faster early in the season – he had an average swing speed of 74.3 mph in May and 74.1 mph in March and April, compared to 72.7 mph so far in September – it didn't have the intended effect. Carroll screwed up his timing with the aggressive changes he made, and it led to a flatter bat path. Perversely, Carroll's attempts to cover up some holes in his swing only worked to open even bigger ones. | | "It's a problem if it starts taking away from your strengths," he said Tuesday. "So I just want to work on keeping my strengths my strengths and working a little bit more in the margins." | | This all kind of reminds me of Jose Ramirez's weird mid-career swoon in 2019 when he hit just .255 with 23 homers. Like Carroll, Ramirez was a victim of his own attempts to preemptively adjust his swing – in his case, Ramirez was trying to beat the shift and become less pull-heavy. But instead of hittin' 'em where they ain't, Ramirez just stopped hittin' 'em hard at all, leading to a collapse of his skill set. When he reverted to his previous swing and approach, Ramirez returned almost immediately to being the dominant hitter he once was. | | | | The lesson? Never try. | | Okay, not really. The real lesson is that hitting baseballs is impossibly difficult to do consistently at a high level, and while there are plenty of success stories of players unlocking another level with bat speed training – Mookie Betts being one prominent example – it's not a panacea. Any change to your kinetic chain as a hitter can cause cascading problems that may not show up until you're faced with pitches thrown in anger. | | And, in Carroll's case, his attempts to improve his swing seem to have only made it worse. But it didn't end up being a permanent issue, and even with his horrifically slow start, Carroll is still a top-24 player in Fantasy for the season; since the All-Star break, he's seventh. After all that, all the ups and the downs, Carroll is pretty much playing exactly like we expected him to. | | So, we should just draft him like the first three months didn't happen, right? Well, no. Plenty of other hitters are having pretty great seasons who weren't almost unusable for Fantasy for half the season, after all, and just because Carroll pulled out of this slump this time doesn't mean he's just immune from these stretches. Your first pick is the most valuable asset you have for building your team, and if you're going to pick a player who has shown a floor as low as Carroll's, he'd better have a significantly higher ceiling than the players you'll be passing on. Can you truly say Carroll's ceiling is higher than Fernando Taits, Vladimir Guerrero, or Yordan Alvarez's? If it is, it's not so much higher that I'm willing to just ignore the first three months entirely to chase it. | | But Carroll has absolutely played his way back into the second-round discussion and potentially the early-second round, too. Given where his value dropped to mid-season, that's a dramatic turnaround. And hey, if he repeats 2023 and his second-half of 2024, he's going to be a pretty awesome second-round pick. I'll take that. | | | | Tuesday's recap | | | | News and Notes | | Francisco Lindor remained out of the lineup Wednesday and is unlikely to play Thursday, too. The hope is he'll be back in the lineup Friday. | | Kenley Jansen is dealing with a shoulder injury. Picked up the save Wednesday but struggled with command and decreased velocity, so don't be surprised if someone like Justin Slaten gets a save opportunity in the next few days if Jansen has to miss time. | | Jordan Westburg is expected to begin a rehab assignment on Thursday. He's been out since August 1 with a fractured right hand, but should be able to return before the end of the regular season if all goes well. | | Bo Bichette was scratched from the lineup due to a right middle finger contusion just a day after he returned from a lengthy absence due to calf troubles. It's just been one of those seasons for Bichette. | | Luis Arraez was out of the lineup with a sore knee. | | Justin Steele did make his return to the mound on Wednesday vs. the A's, but it was an abbreviated start, as he was limited to 57 pitches over 2.2 innings. He'll likely be stretched out a bit more over his final start or two, but I don't think you can plan on using him at this point. | | Kodai Senga hopes to make a one-inning rehab appearance with Triple-A this weekend. If it goes well, he could join the Mets as a reliever for the stretch run and playoffs. | | Gavin Stone is unlikely to return before the end of the season. He's on the IL with shoulder inflammation. | | Bobby Miller was optioned back to Triple-A. He has an 8.52 ERA and 1.77 WHIP in 13 starts, and I'm expecting to hear after the season that he was just never 100% healthy after his early-season shoulder injury. I'll still have some sleeper interest in Miller for 2025, but hopefully, we get some promising reports this offseason. | | The Orioles have officially designated Craig Kimbrel for assignment. He completely fell apart over the last few months and will likely have to settle for a minor-league deal or at least a setup role in 2025 to rebuild his value if he wants to keep pitching. | | Christian Scott will undergo a traditional Tommy John surgery combined with an internal brace early next week. He'll miss the entire 2025 season and will be almost 27 by the next time we see him in the majors, which complicates his long-term appeal after what looked like a breakout season for the prospect. | | Wednesday's standouts | | Framber Valdez, Astros @SD: 7 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 6 K – Valdez continues to pitch well, but his second-half strikeout breakout continues to slow. After five straight starts with at least as many strikeouts as innings pitched (and eight of nine from July 10 through Sept. 6), he has now fallen just short in two straight. I wouldn't say I'm worried about Valdez having 12 strikeouts in his past 13.1 innings, but he was starting to look like a potential top-12 SP for 2025 with the increased strikeouts, and any regression is going to make that case harder to make. He has a super-high floor and has flashed a higher ceiling than we've ever seen before, but I'm not sure I want to rank him as if that ceiling is the new normal. | | Spencer Schwellenbach, Braves @CIN: 6 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 5 K – Schwellenbach has been a bit less sharp of late, but it's a testament to his skill that the results have still been very solid. He has a 3.17 ERA in the month of September with 16 strikeouts to four walks in his 22.2 innings of work, a big step back from the massive strikeout totals he was putting up during the peak of the summer, but not so much that I'm worried about what it means for him in 2025. Besides, Schwellenbach has now thrown 154.2 innings this season, nearly 90 more than he's ever thrown in a season before. That he's running out of gas and still pitching well is a good sign, I think. | | Bailey Ober, Twins @CLE: 7 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 0 BB, 12 K – Ober is having one of those seasons where, if you take out just a couple of truly awful starts, he suddenly looks much better. He has a 3.84 ERA and 0.97 WHIP for the season, but that drops all the way to 2.99 if you take out two starts where he gave up 17 runs in 3.1 innings combined. But here's the problem with that kind of exercise: Ober's underlying numbers suggest the actual number is the one he has "earned," with a 3.78 FIP and 3.84 xFIP for the season. He's a very good pitcher, but he might just be prone to those kinds of blow-ups that leave his ERA inflated. If you're a believer – I know Scott White is – it's very easy to see the upside. I just think I prefer accounting for the whole package of a player's production rather than trying to figure out which starts count and which doesn't. But I can see the case, certainly. | | Tanner Bibee, Guardians vs. MIN: 6.2 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 5 K – It's been a weird season for Bibee, who hasn't been bad but has certainly been a bit disappointing in a season we expected would see him make the leap as the Guardians' next ace. Instead, he's just been fine, mostly. It's still not hard to see a better path forward here, and we caught glimpses of it in this game as he leaned on his slider more and generated seven whiffs with it. Bibee's fastball is, again, fine, but I wouldn't mind seeing him lean more on his secondaries moving forward, as they generally generate weaker contact and more whiffs than his fastball. There's still plenty of upside here, and betting on a post-hype breakout might be the right move for 2025 since his price figures to be pretty reasonable. | | Bryce Miller, Mariners vs. NYY: 6 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 4 BB, 8 K – Miller has remade himself on the fly into one of those kitchen-sink-type pitchers, throwing seven different pitchers at least three times in this one. He still lacks a single killer secondary – his splitter is close – to complement his very good fastball, but he has been mostly able to fake it, putting up a 2.11 ERA, 0.94 WHIP, and 81 strikeouts over 81 innings in his past 14 starts. I've said it a few times, but I think the Mariners have five top-40 starting pitchers heading into next season, and I'm not sure Miller will be the lowest-ranked of them. He might just be really good. | | Bowden Francis, Blue Jays @TEX: 6 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 6 K – Ah, so Francis is allowed to give up more than one hit in a start. He was effective in this one despite his splitter not really working, which is a positive sign – the presence of the splitter may still make his otherwise unexceptional fastball play up a bit, even if the splitter isn't working well on its own in a given start. I don't really know what the long-term upside is for Francis, but I know there's no way I'm sitting him down the stretch in the middle of a seven-game stretch with a 1.47 ER and 0.47 WHIP. | | Ryan Pepiot, Rays vs. BOS: 6 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 12 K – In addition to rankings, I'm starting to put together some lists for sleepers, breakouts, and busts for 2025 – and I'll probably publish those sometime in October, by the way – and I'm thinking Pepiot is likely to be a breakout call for me. He'll lose RP eligibility in 2025, but he should enter the season without any innings concerns after topping 120 this season, and I think there's just a ton of upside here. His fastball has been one of the best in baseball this season – among pitchers with at least 200 PA against their four-seamer, Pepiot is 12th in xwOBA and second in whiff rate with his – and both the changeup and slider have shown some upside. The changeup was his best pitch as a prospect, so if he can take a step forward without losing anything on the fastball, the path to a big step forward is pretty clear. And don't you want to bet on the Rays figuring that out? | | Cody Bradford, Rangers vs. TOR: 7 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 6 K – Bradford bounced back from his worst start of the season by riding his fastball and changeup to success, and that's generally been the best path for him this season. The change-up is his best whiff pitch, while the four-seamer has done a very good job limiting hard contact, and both pitches play well off each other. I don't necessarily buy Bradford as a 3.59 ERA and 0.94 WHIP guy like he's been this season, but if the Rangers offense bounces back in 2025, he could be a very solid Fantasy option to fill out the back end of the rotation. | | Landon Knack, Dodgers @MIA: 5 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 7 K – Knack has shown some interesting skills this season, and I think there might be some upside in his profile for 2025 – and with the Dodgers pitching injuries, he might just have a rotation spot at this point. However, I would have to be pretty desperate to trust him in the final week of this season because he's a flyball pitcher who will be facing the Rockies in Coors Field for one of his two starts. | | Eduardo Rodriguez, Diamondbacks @COL: 6.1 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 11 K – I don't really know where this came from, but Rodriguez has generated a bunch of strikeouts over the past two starts while focusing on his cutter and four-seamer. That combination may be helping his fastball play up, but I also don't think it ever makes sense to draw any conclusions from a pitcher at Coors Field, whether they got good results or poor results. It's just such a different environment from the rest of the league that I don't think there is anything transferable about it. Rodriguez has a mixed bag of matchups next week, with the Giants and Padres on the schedule, and I think I would prefer to only start him in a points league. | | Jakob Junis, Reds vs. ATL: 6 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 6 K – Junis now has a 2.61 ERA and 0.84 WHIP in four starts with the Reds, and I'm sure it won't surprise you to learn that I just don't buy it. He's emerged as a decent enough reliever over the past few seasons, but we have no track record of Junis being an effective starter in the majors, and even his recent run has come with just 17 strikeouts in 20 innings and only six hits allowed. He only has one start left on the schedule at Cleveland, so there isn't much time for regression to hit, but trusting him for that one just feels like playing with fire. | | Jack Kochanowicz, Angels vs. CHW: 7 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 5 K – Kochanowicz is a total throwback, relying on a sinker 70% of the time and generating just 15 strikeouts in 44.1 innings over his past seven starts, which has somehow resulted in a 3.05 ERA. He gets the White Sox again next week, along with an additional matchup against the Rangers, and no, of course, I'm not going to suggest you start someone with 15 strikeouts in his past 44.1 innings of work, even with solid matchups. | | Carlos Correa, SS, Twins – Correa has only started three of five games since coming back from his plantar fascia injury, but he has been hitting well, including a 3-for-5 showing with four RBI Wednesday. He has a hit in each game and is hitting .315 with 13 homers and a .910 OPS in 78 games on the season. He's likely to be extremely cheap in drafts for 2025, and I'll be taking a flier to see if his bounce back this season (when healthy) was real. It's likely to be a risk-free bet. | | Luisangel Acuna,SS, Mets – Acuna had three more hard-hit balls in this one, including a homer in his second straight game. He has solid bat-to-ball skills but hit for almost no power at Triple-A this season, despite a swing that looks like it should be geared for power; he just hasn't shared his older brother's ability to muscle it up. He's maxed out around 109 mph in both the majors and minors, and that probably isn't enough to be a power source absent a strong pull-side swing and it's all academic anyway, as Lindor is expected back by the weekend and will likely push Acuna back to the bench for the rest of the season. But this little power burst is something to keep in mind if it looks like he's in line for an actual role in 2025. There could be some sleeper appeal here. | | Tyler Soderstrom, 1B, Athletics – Soderstrom homered and went 2 for 4 Wednesday, his second straight game with multiple hits. He has started four of five games since coming back from the IL and has a .714 OPS with eight homers in 53 games, which is good enough to matter in two-catcher leagues. I still think there's a decent bat here, though with Soderstrom losing catcher eligibility for 2025; he'll have to prove himself before anyone actually considers him a viable corner infield option early next season. | | | | | | | | NFL | | Milan Derby | Who can remain undefeated through NFL Week 3? Watch your local game live this Sunday at 1 ET on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
Watch Live
| | It's a battle for the best in Milan. Watch Inter take on AC Milan at 2:45 PM ET this Sunday streaming on Paramount+.
Watch Live
|
| | | | |
|
|
