Breaking Down Corbin Carroll's Success
A Blog By Dean
In 2024, it looked like the league had caught up to Corbin Carroll. The reigning National League Rookie of the Year endured what many chalked up to a sophomore slump. But in 2025, Carroll hasn’t just bounced back; he is the best player in the National League. Through the first month of the season, he’s been one of the most dangerous hitters in all of baseball. Armed with improved contact quality, refined mechanics, and elite athleticism, Carroll has reestablished himself not just as a star, but as an MVP favorite.
But what changed? And how do we quantify it?
To answer that, we’ll go beyond the traditional numbers and dive deep into advanced metrics, unpacking things like xSLG, BACON, barrel rate, and wOBACON to paint a full portrait of Corbin Carroll’s incredible resurgence.
Let’s begin with the raw data. Below is a breakdown of Carroll’s key offensive metrics from 2024 compared to the same sample size in 2025. The difference is stark: He rankings in the Top 10 in every year to year change category.
Carroll has not only improved in virtually every contact-related metric but also vaulted into an elite company. His hard-hit rate leapt by nearly 20 points. His barrel rate nearly tripled. His expected slugging percentage (xSLG), which estimates power based on batted ball quality, jumped almost .300 points.
The numbers aren’t just loud, they’re sustainable.
Carroll’s BABIP (.411) might seem high at first glance, but it's supported by his quality of contact. His xBACON (expected batting average on all contact) is .450, leading Major League Baseball. In other words, when Carroll puts the ball in play, the data suggests he should be raking. And he is.
This isn’t the case of a few lucky flares dropping in. This is the profile of a hitter consistently punishing the baseball. To truly appreciate Corbin Carroll’s resurgence, we have to dig deeper into the stats that modern front offices and now, fans use to evaluate performance. These metrics might sound complicated at first, but once broken down, they reveal just how dominant Carroll has become. I always get confused when diving into some of these.
SO!
Let’s walk through a few of the most important ones from his 2025 breakout to get a better understanding of
What some of these analytical categories are and
Why do they correlate with Carroll being great this year?
BACON – Batting Average on Contact
2024: .291
2025: .476 (+185 point increase, 3rd best in MLB)
BACON stands for “Batting Average on CONtact”, including home runs. It gives a more complete view than BABIP (which excludes homers) because it reflects how often a hitter succeeds when they make contact.
In Carroll’s case, that jump from .291 to .476 tells us one thing—when he puts bat to ball, he’s doing serious damage. A BACON above .450 is elite, and Carroll’s .476 is near the top of the league.
It filters out strikeouts and walks and focuses on the quality of his contact. If you’re hitting .476 on contact, you’re turning almost half your batted balls into hits, many of which are for extra bases.
xBACON – Expected BACON
2024: .308
2025: .450 (+142 point increase, highest in MLB)
xBACON estimates what a player should be hitting based on exit velocity, launch angle, and spray. It removes luck and context from the equation.
Carroll having an xBACON .450, which is nearly identical to his actual BACON, proves that what he’s doing is sustainable. He’s not getting bloop hits or wind-aided home runs. He’s squaring up the ball at elite levels.
wOBACON – Weighted On-Base Average on Contact
2024: .350
2025: .612 (+262 point increase, 1st in MLB)
This is one of the most powerful contact-quality metrics in baseball. wOBACON tells us how much value a hitter produces when he makes contact, on a scale similar to OBP (with .400+ being excellent).
Carroll’s wOBACON of .612 is jaw-dropping. To put it in perspective: League average wOBACON is around .370. A .612 mark means Carroll is getting on base (and hitting for power) at a rate that few players in history sustain—even in peak seasons.
xwOBACON – Expected Weighted On-Base Average on Contact
2024: .349
2025: .587 (+238 point increase, 1st in MLB)
Again, this is the expected version of the stat above. And again, Carroll is the best in baseball. His expected value per batted ball is off the charts and closely mirrors his actual results.
The advanced contact metrics tell a powerful story—Carroll isn’t just hot. He’s hitting the ball so hard, so well, and so consistently that his outcomes aren’t just impressive, they’re deserved.
xSLG and xISO – The Power Predictors
xSLG 2024: .391 → 2025: .681 (+.290)
xISO 2024: .150 → 2025: .359 (+.209)
These expected stats are great for evaluating how real a hitter’s power is.
xSLG (Expected Slugging) accounts for how often a player hits for extra bases based on batted ball quality.
xISO (Expected Isolated Power) isolates only the power element by removing batting average.
Both of these show that Carroll’s power surge is no accident. A .681 xSLG is MVP-level. For comparison, Aaron Judge’s 2022 MVP season came with an xSLG of .686.
You don’t need to be a stats expert to understand what’s happening here: Corbin Carroll is making harder, better contact than he did in 2024. And the advanced metrics, designed to eliminate luck, confirm it.
Now, lets dive into some percentile rankings.
The percentile chart is one of the simplest but most effective tools in modern baseball analysis. It tells us where players rank among their peers in key skill areas, hitting, running, defense, and beyond. A 100th percentile means you're the best in the league; 50th is league average; anything under 30 often raises red flags.
*Had to make this into a chart to show the changes from year to year easier*
The largest positive changes came in the core hitting metrics:
xSLG (Expected Slugging): Up 54 percentile points. This reflects his jump in power—Carroll is crushing the ball far more consistently.
Barrel%: Up 57 points, now in the 99th percentile. He’s barreling nearly 1 out of every 5 batted balls—elite territory.
xBA (Expected Batting Average): Up 59 points, now in the 93rd percentile. He’s spraying line drives with authority again.
Also noteworthy is his Sweet Spot %—how often he hits the ball in the optimal launch angle range—rising from the 3rd to 64th percentile. That 61-point jump suggests improved swing plane and timing, resulting in more productive contact.
And while his bat speed (90th percentile) improved, the biggest sleeper leap may be in arm value, which skyrocketed from the 3rd to the 89th percentile. Carroll isn’t just hitting again—he’s showing a more complete defensive skill set.
Carroll’s plate discipline metrics have dipped:
Chase %: 74th → 15th
Whiff %: 74th → 21st
K %: 68th → 34th
On the surface, this looks concerning.
However, he’s swinging more aggressively, and the results are devastating when he connects. His swing decisions may have become more risk-reward, but given his top-tier contact quality, the trade-off is working. Put simply, he's sacrificing some discipline for elite power, and it’s paying off.
It was fun diving into Corbin Carroll today, but two names kept popping up when going through all these analytics.
Pete Alonso and Spencer Torkelson…
Let me know whom I should look into next.
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