Amid a Deluge of Injuries, the Diamondbacks Have Lost Corbin Carroll

Fernando Tatis Jr. was fortunate that the pitch that hit him on the right wrist last week didn’t cause a fracture, but elsewhere in the NL West, Corbin Carroll wasn’t so lucky. On Monday, the Diamondbacks learned that their 24-year-old star has suffered a chip fracture in his left wrist, the result of being hit by a pitch on June 18; he hadn’t played since. Carroll is the second Arizona regular to land on the injured list this week due to a pitch-induced fracture that was only discovered belatedly, after catcher Gabriel Moreno, and he’ll miss significant time. As if the Diamondbacks — who lost ace Corbin Burnes and late-inning relievers Justin Martinez and A.J. Puk to Tommy John surgery earlier this month — needed more bad news, they’ve lost infielder Ildemaro Vargas to a fractured metatarsal, and are crossing their fingers in hopes that both Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez can avoid the IL after making early exits from Monday’s blowout win.

In the eighth inning of last Wednesday’s game in Toronto, Carroll was hit on the left hand by a 91-mph sinker from the Blue Jays’ Justin Bruihl. While he stayed in the game to run the bases, he departed at the end of the inning:

Initial X-rays were negative, and both Carroll and the Diamondbacks hoped that the timing of the right fielder’s return would depend mainly on pain tolerance. After missing the team’s next four games in Toronto and Colorado — during which he remained available to pinch-run and play defense, though the call never came — Carroll was reexamined when the team arrived in Chicago to play the White Sox on Monday. MRI results and additional testing revealed that he had suffered a chip fracture on the back of his hand.

A chip fracture, sometimes referred to as an avulsion fracture, occurs when a small piece of bone is pulled away from the larger bone, generally by a ligament or tendon. “That’s still a little bit confusing to all of us,” said manager Torey Lovullo of the diagnosis. “He’s going to continue to get some opinions just to find out what that official diagnosis means and what the time frame will be.”

While the term “chip fracture” doesn’t get used often in baseball circles, Aaron Judge missed seven weeks with one in 2018. Within the Baseball Prospectus Recovery Dashboard, the median time on the injured list for position players who suffered any kind of wrist fracture since the start of 2016 is 48 days, while the mean is 55 days (to calculate those, I excluded all of the wrist injuries that happened in September, which did not leave enough time for players to return, as well as the 2022 motorcycle crash-induced wrist injury of Tatis, whose return was delayed by his PED suspension). A timeline in the ballpark of those other averages would put Carroll’s return sometime in the middle of August. Under the Knife’s Will Carroll (no relation) bracketed the right fielder’s absence at four to eight weeks.

The injury interrupts what was shaping up to be Carroll’s best offensive season to date, even better than his 2023 NL Rookie of the Year winning campaign, during which he batted .285/.362/.506 (130 wRC+) while homering 25 times, stealing 54 bases, and helping the Diamondbacks to their first World Series appearance since 2001. After dipping to .231/.322/.428 (107 wRC+) last year after a series of mechanical tweaks flattened his bat path and compromised his quality of contact — a situation he was able to correct later in the season — Carroll is currently hitting .255/.341/.573, with his slugging percentage ranking second in the NL behind Shohei Ohtani. Meanwhile, his 3.5 WAR is tied with Kyle Tucker for third behind Pete Crow-Armstrong (4.0) and Ohtani (3.8), his 20 homers rank seventh, and his 148 wRC+ is eighth.

Carroll has powered up by building on the mechanical adjustments he made in mid-2024, specifically by increasing the tilt of his swing path (undoing the flattening of his swing), increasing his attack angle (the vertical direction of his sweet spot at the point of impact), and adding bat speed. Here’s a graph showing his monthly averages for swing path tilt and attack angle for as far back as Statcast’s swing data goes:

In late 2023, Carroll had a swing path tilt that ranged from 25–27 degrees and an attack angle that ranged from 4–7 degrees. Wanting to improve on what was already something of a storybook season, he spent the winter making adjustments aimed at improving his bat speed and better handling fastballs and cutters. However, he got in the habit of counter-rotating too much — turning back too far towards the catcher — while loading his swing, which caused his bat path to flatten out and gave him less time to react to velocity. During the first half of 2024, his swing had an average tilt of 21-22 degrees, and an attack angle of 5-6 degrees; he hit just .212/.301/.334 (76 wRC+) before the All-Star break. In the second half of the season, his swing got steeper, up to 24 degrees, and his attack angle increased to eight degrees; he hit .258/.351/.568 (147 wRC+) after the All-Star break, which looks a whole lot like this year’s stat line. He’s continued to increase both angles, with his swing tilt in the 24-27 degree range this year and his attack angle in the 10-11 degree range.

With his reworked swing, Carroll’s average bat speed has increased from 73.7 mph last year to 74.9 mph this year, and with it his fast-swing rate has increased from 36.9% to 48.5%. He’s not squaring up balls as frequently, and his strikeout rate has increased from 19% to 24.8%, but the payoff has been well worth it. Updating a recent deep dive on Carroll by MLB.com’s Mike Petriello, he has the majors’ second-highest percentage of swings with an ideal attack angle (between five and 20 degrees at contact) at 72.3%. Here’s a look at his improved quality-of-contact numbers:

Carroll’s expected slugging percentage has gained 174 points relative to last year, and unlike in either 2023 or ’24, it’s closely aligned with his actual slugging percentage. His barrel rate has not only more than doubled, it’s increased by the second-largest margin of any hitter with at least 300 plate appearances last year and 150 PA this year:

That’s a helluva player to lose for awhile, even in isolation — and Carroll’s injury is hardly an isolated incident on an increasingly banged-up roster. The Diamondbacks do have what they hope is a competent fill-in for Carroll in Jake McCarthy, a 27-year-old lefty who hit .285/.349/.400 (110 wRC+), stole 25 bases, and played solid enough defense to total 3.0 WAR last season, his only full one in the majors since debuting in 2021. McCarthy began this year in a center field platoon with Alek Thomas but went just 3-for-41 with one double and four walks in 14 games before being optioned to Triple-A Reno on April 21. He hit .314/.401/.440 (109 wRC+) with 12 steals in 49 games at Reno, and despite going 0-for-4 in his return on Tuesday night against the White Sox, he made an impact by robbing Ryan Noda of a home run:

McCarthy doesn’t have much of a platoon split, but both his career 92 wRC+ versus lefties and 99 versus righties — with a .364 SLG against the former and .381 against the latter — are pretty thin. The Diamondbacks figure to use righty Randal Grichuk, who owns a career 119 wRC+ against lefties but just an 84 wRC+ in 89 PA against them this year, to complement McCarthy to at least some degree.

As for the rest of the wounded, Davy Andrews covered Moreno’s injury in depth on Tuesday, but the short version is that on June 6, a wild pitch from Cristian Mena deflected off his glove and hit his right hand. He was initially diagnosed with a contusion, as neither X-rays nor an MRI showed a fracture, but after going in and out of the lineup, a follow-up MRI revealed he had indeed suffered a hairline fracture in his right index finger. On Saturday, he was placed on the 10-day IL retroactive to June 15; he’s expected to be out through the All-Star break. The 25-year-old backstop, who’s currently hitting .270/.324/.414 (105 wRC+), will be replaced for the time being by light-hitting backup Jose Herrera (.184/.296/.255, 60 wRC+) and by new arrival James McCann, who hit .234/.279/.388 (89 wRC+) for the Orioles last year but had spent all of this one in the minor league system of the Braves, hitting .297/.331/.493 (116 wRC+) at Triple-A Gwinnett while waiting for the phone to ring. McCann had a rolling opt-out clause that allowed any team to offer him a major league contract, at which point the Braves could either recall him or let him accept the deal; once the Diamondbacks chimed in, Atlanta chose to let him go.

During the first inning of Monday’s 10-0 rout of the White Sox, Suárez was hit on the right hand by a 96-mph four-seamer from Shane Smith. Though in obvious pain, he stayed in the game and ran the bases, but yielded to Vargas in the bottom of the first. Initial X-rays showed no fracture, but as the sagas of Carroll and Moreno illustrate, the 33-year-old slugger isn’t out of the woods yet; he’ll undergo an MRI after the swelling subsides.

Suárez, who hit four homers in a game on April 26, won NL Player of the Week honors for the second time this season just this past week. He’s hitting .251/.323/.569 (140 wRC+) and ranks second in the NL in homers with 25, one behind Ohtani. If he does go on the IL, the team has 22-year-old top prospect Jordan Lawlar — a 55-FV shortstop who’s currently 15th on The Board — waiting in the wings at Reno, but he’s day-to-day with a sore hamstring. Lawlar, who’s raking at a .321/.411/.586 (138 wRC+) clip with 10 homers and 18 steals at Reno while splitting time between second, short, and third, went 0-for-19 with a walk during an eight-game stint with the Diamondbacks last month.

The Suárez/Lawlar situation will be closely watched. Suárez is a pending free agent who would be an inviting trade target ahead of the July 31 deadline, and third base might be Lawler’s clearest path to regular playing time with second baseman Ketel Marte and shortstop by Geraldo Perdomo both thriving and under contract for much longer (2030 for the former, ’29 for the latter, with options that can extend both deals). The Diamondbacks are currently 41-38, 7 1/2 games back in the NL West and 2 1/2 back in the Wild Card race, with 33.3% playoff odds. They could plausibly swap Lawlar in for Suárez without going into full selloff mode, but for that to happen, they’ll have to allay some concerns about his hit tool (35 PV/40 FV, according to Eric Longenhagen) and see stronger offensive production in the majors. The development of Lawlar’s hitting has lagged behind the rest of his game amid myriad injuries in the minors (shoulder, rib, hamstring, thumb), and he’s slashed just .080/.179/.080 with 20 strikeouts in 56 PA with the Diamondbacks in 2023 and ‘25.

Unfortunately for Arizona, the hits kept coming after Suárez’s departure on Monday. In the top of the second inning, Naylor fouled off Smith’s first pitch, then grimaced as he returned to the dugout upon striking out. He appeared to be in pain after grounding out in the fourth, after which he departed in favor of Tim Tawa. Lovullo originally wrote Naylor into Tuesday’s lineup as the DH, with Pavin Smith at first — a common alignment for the team this season — but Naylor was scratched before first pitch due to right shoulder discomfort and replaced by Grichuk.

Vargas got the start at third base on Tuesday in place of Suárez, but was hit on the right foot by a Mike Vasil pitch in the second inning; he remained in the game until the bottom of the fourth, when Tawa replaced him. X-rays showed that the 33-year-old infielder, who had hit .286/.310/.464 in 29 PA since being recalled from Reno, fractured his fifth metatarsal, the bone at the base of the pinky toe. He departed the ballpark in a walking boot, and will be placed on the 10-day injured list.

For all of their injuries, the Diamondbacks are 14-7 this month. Somehow Lovullo and general manager Mike Hazen have managed to patch together a roster that has kept them competitive, but without Carroll and Moreno — and perhaps Suárez and Naylor as well, not to mention their thinned-out pitching staff — the task has suddenly gotten a lot taller.