Corbin Carroll is making a mockery of the Rookie of the Year race in the National League, as he’s a humongous -600 favorite to win the award at BetMGM.
The 22-year-old center fielder is on track to become the first player in Arizona Diamondbacks history to capture it, but has a chance at even more rarified air in 2023.
Carroll has moved up to second in National League MVP odds at +450, recently surpassing Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. The only player ahead of him is odds-on betting favorite Ronald Acuna, who sits at -135.
If Carroll can overtake Acuna, he would become only the third player to ever win Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in the same season.
The first to do it was Boston Red Sox outfielder Fred Lynn in 1979, when he batted .331 with 21 home runs and 105 RBIs while leading the American League in runs, doubles, slugging percentage and OPS.
The second was Ichiro Suzuki in 2001, although it comes with the caveat that he was 27 years old and had played nine previous seasons in Japan. Ichiro hit .350 that year with eight homers, 69 RBIs, 127 runs scored and a league-best 56 stolen bases.
Carroll and Acuna, Jr. are currently tied in Fangraphs WAR with 3.5, second behind only Shoehei Ohtani in MLB, so the race could be a good one down the stretch.
The Braves superstar has a longer track record of success and is the deserved favorite, as he’s in the midst of a special season.
However, Carroll has stuck with him every step of the way and is currently out-pacing Acuna, Jr. in important hitting categories like OPS+ and weighted on-base average.
It took the oddsmakers awhile to catch on to Carroll’s brilliance, as he was listed as a 200-to-1 longshot to win the award less than two weeks ago. I wrote about how great of a value it was at the time, and I’ve heard from several people who jumped on him at those odds.
Now he’s up to +450, as oddsmakers and baseball fans alike realize they are watching a burgeoning superstar in Arizona.
Carroll went No. 16 overall in the 2019 draft but The Athletic’s Keith Law has said that he would have been in the discussion as the No. 1 overall pick if teams knew his power would develop like this (Carroll leads the National League with a slugging percentage of .591 despite being 5-foot-10 and 165 pounds).
He rocketed to the top of Law’s prospect rankings heading into this season, so big things were expected in his career, and Carroll has hit the ground running from Day 1.
Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz seems to be the only true threat to Carroll in the Rookie of the Year race, but he has distant +1000 odds.
The big fish, though, is the MVP.
The Diamondbacks have claimed several Cy Young awards but never an MVP, and the National League has never seen a player grab that hardware and the Rookie of the Year in the same season.
Carroll needs to outpace Acuna the rest of the way while also staying ahead of established stars like Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Luis Arraez and Juan Soto.
It’s a big ask. It’s also something he’s been able to handle through the first 74 games of the year.
