When Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Corbin Carroll arrived at the ballpark on Sunday, he found sitting on his chair a printout with details on each ball hit his way the previous night. Certain columns had been highlighted, with notes scrawled in the margins.
This was the work of outfield coach Dave McKay, and it was one of the first things Carroll mentioned when asked about the string of highlight reel catches he has been making in center field in recent days.
“I’m pretty happy with how my jumps are,” Carroll said. “They’re becoming a lot better. My routes. It’s a big credit to McKay, staying very honest. We’ll see all that stuff daily. It’s kind of like a game to see how good you can be.”
Carroll entered the year expecting to be the Diamondbacks’ everyday right fielder, but a hamstring injury to Alek Thomas changed the team’s plans. Carroll worked in center only sparingly in spring training and with Thomas expected back in short order, McKay said the two of them did not devote a great deal of time at the position in the early weeks of the season.
But when Thomas suffered a setback in early May, Carroll and McKay redoubled their efforts. The results have been evident. Carroll has always been a good defender, but he seems to be taking it to a more consistent level.
On Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium, Carroll made a running, jumping catch at the wall to take extra bases away from Mookie Betts. A night earlier, he raced in to make a sliding catch on a Teoscar Hernandez line drive. On Friday night, he raced to the wall in right-center at Chase Field to snare a deep drive off the bat of Tim Anderson.
“He’s making really good progress,” McKay said.
McKay’s focus with Carroll — and with all of his outfielders — has been on first-step jumps. It is the column that tends to be highlighted on the printouts McKay distributes, the one that Carroll said he uses as a sort of game within the game to try to get better. A staffer compiles the data every day, and McKay compares the numbers to what he sees on video.
On one outfielder’s sheet on Sunday, he circled a time and wrote, “Like to see this get better.” On another, he drew an arrow at one time and wrote, “Good.”
“It’s good to get some feedback on something that used to be not quantifiable,” outfielder Jake McCarthy said. “With hitting, you get out and you’re like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to make an adjustment.’ But defensively there’s really never been a way of going about that. But you can see a direct trend of, ‘Oh my jumps are getting better’ or ‘My jumps are getting worse.’”
On average, an outfielder can cover five feet of ground within 0.95 seconds of the ball leaving the bat, McKay said. He wants his outfielders quicker than that.
“It’s hard to get a good first step on a ball hit right at you and over your head; you’ve got to pause for a moment to read it,” McKay said. “But balls off to the side, you should get a first-step jump that should be a low time. When it’s not what I think it should be, it comes down to focus. You’ve got to focus on doing that; you’ve got to be better than that.”
