“Snakes Alive” was the rally cry of the D-backs’ march to the 2023 World Series. Now a big offseason has them thinking big again in one of the toughest divisions in baseball.
In the history of our great sport, only three players with the first name Corbin have ever donned a Major League Baseball uniform.
Out in the Arizona desert, the Diamondbacks are counting on two of them – Burnes and Carroll – to help lead the franchise back to October’s promised land in 2025.
Carroll was the rookie phenom who helped lift Arizona to a rather shocking appearance in the 2023 World Series, building off his history-making regular season. The 5-foot-10 dynamo was the first player in MLB history with at least 30 doubles, 10 triples, 25 homers and 50 stolen bases in a season (Elly De La Cruz became the second in 2024), and he was an easy choice as the unanimous NL Rookie of the Year.
And speaking of shocking, Burnes’ choice to sign a six-year, $210 million deal as a free agent this offseason was a seismic move for many in baseball for two reasons:
- 1. Not many folks thought the Diamondbacks would win any sort of bidding war for an elite free agent.
- 2. Not many folks pegged the D-backs as a preferred destination for the starting pitcher every World Series contender wanted to sign.
Fun fact: The other Corbin – last name Martin – also pitched with the Diamondbacks; he was in the organization from July 2019 through April 2024 and saw action in 12 big-league games for Arizona, finishing with a 7.28 ERA.
And, he has a connection to another rather shocking D-backs free-agent signing, when the club gave starter Zack Greinke a six-year, $206.5 million contract that began with the 2016 season. When Greinke was traded from Arizona to Houston in 2019, Martin, a second-round pick in the 2017 MLB Draft, was part of the package that went from the Astros to the Diamondbacks.
Because of course he was. And, obviously, Patrick Corbin was Greinke’s rotation mate in Arizona from 2016-18.
But our point isn’t to push for the franchise to change its name to the Arizona Corbins. Maybe down the road, though, if the current Corbins deliver a World Series crown? It’s probably not as much of a stretch as you might think. A World Series crown, that is.
Burnes joins a Diamondbacks rotation that should be a top-five group in the majors. Zac Gallen finished top five in the NL Cy Young vote in 2022 and 2023 and would have been a contender for a similar finish in 2024 had he not spent most of June on the IL. After its run to the Fall Classic in 2023, Arizona just missed the playoffs despite jumping from 84 to 89 wins.
In his first full season in the rotation, Brandon Pfaadt showed signs of a potential breakthrough season on the near horizon; his 3.61 FIP was well below his ERA of 4.71 and actually better than Shota Imanaga, the fifth-place finisher in the Cy Young race who had a 3.72 FIP. Veterans Merrill Kelly, Eduardo Rodriguez and Jordan Montgomery should be motivated and looking to show injury-hampered seasons were a distant memory.
Burnes, of course, has a Cy Young Award under his belt. Pitching for Milwaukee, the right-hander was electric in his breakout 2021 season. He struck out 234 batters in 167 innings, posting a 2.43 ERA and microscopic 1.63 FIP while allowing just seven homers all season and leading the NL in strikeouts per nine (12.6) and strikeout-to-walk ratio (6.88).
His 144 whiff+ that season was the best of any starting pitcher outside of Jacob deGrom – remember, that was the year he posted a 1.08 ERA in 15 starts – and his 122 strike+ was elite, too.
By accumulated raw value (RV), which measures a pitcher’s ability to minimize discipline, contact and slug in one metric, Burnes was the most valuable pitcher in the majors, checking in at minus-54.1 (lower is better for pitchers). In fact, no pitcher has topped that accumulated RV- in a single season since that 2021 campaign.
As a comparison, the 2024 Cy Young winners had RV numbers of -36.6 (Tarik Skubal) and -32.7 (Chris Sale). And by a pitch breakdown, Burnes’ cutter had the best RV (-31.8) of any offering in the bigs; the only other pitches better than -20 were the elite four-seamers thrown by Carlos Rodon and Zack Wheeler.
He’s not quite that same electric arm at this point in his career, heading into his age-30 season; is whiff+ last year for the Orioles was 105 and his strike+ was 103. He is, though, one of the most reliable aces in the sport, relying on a similar formula for success, starting with his cut fastball. He didn’t throw the pitch his first two seasons in the bigs, relying primarily on a four-seam fastball – which tended to get hit hard – in tandem with a slider.
He introduced the cutter in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, and it became his primary choice during that 2021 Cy Young season. It’s been the best cutter in the sport over the past four years, per raw value. In 2024, Burnes’ cutter (-18.5 RV) ranked behind only sliders from Skubal (-25.5) and Sale (-23.8) and Hunter Greene’s four-seam fastball (-19.5).
That’s it.
Make no mistake, the D-backs signed Burnes hoping to gain an edge in the very competitive NL West, especially against the Dodgers. And it’s not so much about winning the division, but having a chance against that lineup should the teams meet in the postseason.
What will be interesting is the different approaches Burnes will likely take against Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts when those future Hall of Famers are at the plate. Ohtani is 3 for 6 with a home run lifetime versus Burnes, while Betts has gone 3 for 9 with a double.
Burnes throws his cutter and curveball to everybody. But against lefties like Ohtani, he attacks with his changeup as the primary accessory pitch. Against right-handed hitters like Betts, he basically abandons the changeup and throws sinkers and sliders, with an occasional sweeper mixed in.
Check out his 2024 pitch totals from Opta’s database:
As for Corbin Carroll, the Diamondbacks are hoping for somewhat of a bounce-back season in 2025. After posting a slash line of .285/.362/.506 with a 133 OPS as a rookie, he got off to a miserable start to the season – his batting average didn’t clear .200 for good until June – and his overall numbers dropped to .231/.322/.428 with a 107 OPS.
That feels like a rather precipitous drop. But stepping back and looking through a wider lens, though, maybe it wasn’t as bad as was perceived?
Let’s compare his year-to-year stats in the Opta database.
They look pretty similar, don’t they? Side note: Carroll’s raw value+ was very similar to two other rookie sensations from 2023 who took a bit of a perceived step back offensively in 2024. Julio Rodriguez checked in at 109, and Adley Rutschman was at 108.
Carroll’s traditional year-to-year statistics were similar, too. He had 65 extra-base hits, 76 RBIs and 116 runs scored in 2023, followed by 58, 74 and 121 in 2024. His strikeout percentage was nearly identical (19.4 to 19.0), as were his hard-hit percentages (41.4 and 40.9) and GB/FB percentages (0.78 and 0.79).
Maybe the most noticeable difference? Check out his batting average on balls in play.
In 2023, that number was sky-high: .325, well above the MLB average of .297. In 2024, the number cratered, down to .256, well below the MLB average of .291. Part of that, honestly, can be attributed to luck, though.
Another element? As most ardent D-backs fans could probably tell you, Carroll popped up a lot last year. Only five players in the bigs had a higher pop-up percentage than Carroll’s 12.1%, which was up from 7.3% the year before. There is no more frustrating result for a hitter than a pop-up.
Frustrating was also a description of Carroll’s mindset through much of 2024. A relentlessly hard worker – one of the many reasons Arizona was comfortable giving him an eight-year, $111-million extension during spring training of 2023, preceding his Rookie of the Year season – Carroll tinkered with his mechanics during the season, citing a swing that was too flat, which prevented him from lifting the ball with power.
The improvement was noticeable. Carroll hit two home runs on July 13, right before the All-Star break, and from that day forward he produced a .262/.355/.598 slash line, with 19 homers in 66 games. Before that game, he’d produced a .210/.219/.316 slash line with only three homers in 92 games.
Corbin was Corbin again, and now with the other Corbin in the fold, a trip back into October seems like a very real possibility.
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