PHILADELPHIA — On an elevator at the Arizona Diamondbacks team hotel, where a bus would whisk the players to Citizens Bank Park for Game 7 of the National League Championship Series, Tommy Pham nodded to Corbin Carroll.
“It’s your turn today,” Pham told Carroll. The 23-year-old rookie outfielder smiled at Pham, a 35-year-old veteran. “No,” Pham repeated. “It’s your turn today.”
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At the bat rack, minutes before Carroll strode to the plate to face the Philadelphia Phillies, Arizona starter Zac Gallen approached.
“Listen, we don’t need you to be anyone you’re not,” Gallen said. “We just need you to be you.”
“I know,” Carroll responded, as Gallen recalled. “I know.”
A few hours later, after a 4-2 victory led Arizona to an improbable pennant celebration, Carroll waded through a crowd of well-wishers and team employees. He jogged from the outfield through the dugout into the smoky and stinky clubhouse. Red bottles of Budweiser and green bottles of J. Roget Brut littered the floor. Plumes of cigar smoke filled the air. The room teemed with drenched Diamondbacks.
They were celebrating because their unheralded relievers silenced the Phillies lineup. They were celebrating because rookie catcher Gabriel Moreno supplied a pair of singles. And they were also celebrating because Carroll, after a slump-ridden series, came alive. Carroll recorded only three hits in the first six games against Philadelphia. He provided three in Game 7 alone, plus a crucial sacrifice fly to pad the lead for the bullpen. He scored twice as Arizona stunned their hosts.
Corbin is so, so clutch. pic.twitter.com/lZLjZJvVLz
— Arizona Diamondbacks (@Dbacks) October 25, 2023
His head was still swimming as he waded into the throng. It was not until the Diamondbacks won Game 6, he insisted, that he considered the World Series a realistic possibility. Minutes after the victory, he was thinking about what he could do this weekend against the Texas Rangers. Because the Diamondbacks — the 84-win Diamondbacks — will be there when the Fall Classic begins Friday.
“It’s so improbable,” Carroll said. “It doesn’t make sense on a surface level. But there’s just something about this team.”
The most tangible reason for this club reaching this stage is Carroll. He will almost certainly be the unanimous choice for National League Rookie of the Year. In his first full season, he hit 25 home runs, led the National League with 10 triples and posted an .868 OPS. He stole 54 bases. He ranked ninth among position players in FanGraphs’ version of wins above replacement. He started in his first All-Star Game.
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Carroll, a 5-foot-10, 165-pounder taken in the first round of the 2019 draft, resembled the prototype player that Major League Baseball intended to promote with the rules introduced in 2023. He put balls in play. He zipped around the bases. In the process, he made the $111 million extension he signed before the season look like a bargain.
“He’s a superstar player,” Diamondbacks general manager Mike Hazen said. “He’s a top-five to top-10 player in this league. He’s going to be a top-five to top-10 player in this league for a long time to come. He’s the engine that gets us going. He can do anything we need on the field. He hits. He runs. He plays defense. And we’re lucky we have him for the next eight years.”
Carroll galvanized his teammates in the first two rounds of this postseason. He batted .412 and scored six runs as the Diamondbacks swept the Milwaukee Brewers and then the Los Angeles Dodgers. Philadelphia slowed him for most of this series. He was batting .130 when Pham and Gallen gassed him up before Game 7.
“I think Corbin would be the first person to tell you: He wasn’t having the series he wanted to,” Gallen said.
Well, actually …
“I didn’t necessarily feel like I was searching,” Carroll said. “In my mind, some things didn’t go my way. And that’s baseball. And tonight, some did.”
Carroll notched the game’s first hit. His infield single off Phillies starter Ranger Suárez set the tone. The Diamondbacks dimmed the crowd with a first-inning rally, as Moreno followed with a single and first baseman Christian Walker added an RBI groundout. Carroll floated a single over the head of shortstop Trea Turner in the third and stole second base. Two innings later, Carroll rolled a grounder up the middle. He swiped second base again, putting himself in position to score on Moreno’s single.
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To hear Carroll tell it, he did not make major changes after his slow start. He made a minor adjustment with the placement of his hands, which he declined to detail. The willingness to tinker, ever so slightly, still impressed his teammates.
“It’s a fine line of knowing when to trust yourself and knowing when to make adjustments,” Walker said. “You see him on a stage like this, and he throws out three hits, a couple RBI. He is exactly who everybody thought he was going to be.”
His penultimate at-bat may have been the most meaningful. After a single by shortstop Geraldo Perdomo and a double by NLCS MVP Ketel Marte in the seventh, Carroll faced Philadelphia reliever José Alvarado. There was one out. Arizona led by a run. During the regular season, Alvarado limited left-handed hitters like Carroll to a .522 OPS. Carroll recognized the situation. With the Phillies infield drawn in, desperate to pounce on any grounder, he altered his approach, aiming to put a ball in the air. When Alvarado elevated a 99.8 mph sinker, Carroll lofted a sacrifice fly into right field. Perdomo scored, easing the tension for Arizona’s bullpen.
It was the sort of performance from Carroll, an understated fellow known for his sense of calm, that the Diamondbacks have come to expect. Even after six quiet games, the team needed him to be himself in Game 7. Carroll did the job.
“And we’re going to count on him going into the World Series, too,” Hazen said. “Because he’s our best player.”
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Andy McCullough is a senior writer for The Athletic covering MLB. He previously covered baseball at the Los Angeles Times, the Kansas City Star and The Star-Ledger. A graduate of Syracuse University, he grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Follow Andy on Twitter @ByMcCullough
