Corbin Carroll was top-3 among position players in Fangraphs WAR late last week, but for whatever reason, he wasn’t getting any respect from oddsmakers.
The Diamondbacks’ rookie center fielder had dumbfoundingly long 200-to-1 odds to win the National League MVP on Thursday, June 8.
He had played great baseball up to that time, but whether it was lack of name recognition, youth or too small of a sample, the sportsbooks refused to put him on the short-list of contenders for the most prestigious individual award in the game.
Well, since then, Carroll has continued walloping the baseball, and his odds have seen a meteoric rise.
Carroll went from 200/1 on Thursday to 90/1 on Friday to 50/1 on Saturday. And now, in the span of only four days, Carroll’s odds to win National League MVP have dropped all the way to 25/1 at DraftKings, as of Monday morning.
Carroll was tied for the 31st-best odds to win the award on Thursday and is now tied for fourth:
- Ronald Acuna, Jr. -105
- Freddie Freeman +500
- Mookie Betts +1000
- Corbin Carroll +2500
- Paul Goldschmidt +2500
- Pete Alonso +2500
- Juan Soto +2500
- Fernando Tatis, Jr. +2500
Carroll is currently tied with Acuna and Freeman for the National League lead in fWAR at 3.2, despite more than 40 fewer plate appearances than both.
He is hitting .308 with 13 home runs, 33 RBIs, 47 runs scored, 19 stolen bases and an OPS+ of 163, which is second in the National League behind Freeman. He also plays plus defense at a premium position, which will help his cause when the voting happens at the end of the season.
Carroll has been incredible over the past four games, hitting .526 with three homers, eight RBIs, two stolen bases and an OPS of 1.737, which has correlated with his surging MVP odds.
Carroll is eligible for Rookie of the Year and has a stranglehold on that award with current odds of -250. Reds phenom Elly De La Cruz has +600 odds after a great start following his MLB call-up last week, but it would take a dominant final few months from De La Cruz and a huge slump or injury to Carroll to make that one a close race.
Carroll was named the No. 1 prospect in all of baseball by Keith Law heading into the season, so it’s not a surprise that he’s having success.
The oddsmakers hesitated in putting him among the top MVP candidates as recently as last week, but Carroll’s dominant play has not only turned heads, but has finally changed the odds.
Acuna, Freeman and Betts are superstars and are not expected to slow down the rest of the way, so Carroll still has a big mountain to climb in order to claim the first National League MVP award in Diamondbacks history.
But he’s been among the best players in the league all season, and the sportsbooks are finally recognizing it.
