The 2023 NL Rookie of the Year underwent a swing change during spring training, and he is having an MVP-worthy start for the first month of the young season. In an interview with Arizona Sports, he said, “I think it’ll help with some sequencing stuff and having them in their spots.” He is alluding to the sudden change in hand placement, aiming to keep them up a little higher.
He successfully increased his bat speed to 74.9 mph, achieving the highest fast swing rate percentage of 48% and a hard hit rate of nearly 57%.
He is having a stellar first month of the season, and if he keeps improving at this rate, he could be a perennial all-star. He worked hard and felt he could do better than last season, so he improved his swing to make it faster and more accurate in terms of barrel hit rate percentage. He is top five in more than one hitting category: fifth in OPS (.983), first in triples, fifth in hits, and second in homers with 11, on pace to hit 43 for the season while slugging .613. Those are incredible elite numbers, rightfully placing him fifth in MVP votes so far.
The Diamondbacks are a small-market team, but they landed a star in the making. He has been the bright spot on the struggling Arizona Diamondbacks team, as they currently sit fourth in the strongest division in all of MLB, the NL West, a division where the Dodgers, the Padres, and the Giants reside, 4.5 games behind the Giants and Padres, and currently 6 games behind the NL West leader, the Los Angeles Dodgers.
The Diamondbacks, starting a four-game series tonight against Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Dodgers' ace and the MLB leader in ERA (.90), present an opportunity to gain some ground against the Dodgers. While winning the series against the league's top team will undoubtedly be a challenging task, the D-Backs, led by Corbin Carroll, could potentially emerge victorious, one victory at a time.
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