The Ying-and-Yang Buddies are lighting it up for the Rockies.
Rookie center fielder Cole Carrigg, the club’s 24-year-old “wild stallion” who made his debut on June 9, hit three home runs in his first seven big league games. Third baseman Kyle Karros, 25, entered Friday night’s game against the Pirates hitting .370, four doubles, one triple, one home hun, five RBIs in June.
The two are best buddies and lean on each other, but their personalities are fire and ice.
“I’d say I’m way more calm, cool, and collected than he is,” Karros said. “I’m more of a mellow, chill guy. He’s more the exact opposite, but I think it works well.”
Carrigg, who’s said he plays “with my hair on fire,” concurs.
“Most of the people I get along with well, and all of my best friends from home, are a lot like Kyle,” said Carrigg, who grew up in Turlock, Calif., near Modesto. “I think we bring the best out of each other. He kind of calms me down, and I bring him up.”
After a six-game road trip through Las Vegas and Chicago, the Rockies got the day off on Thursday. Karros figured he’d enjoy a laid-back, solitary day. Then he remembered that Carrigg had recently moved into the same downtown Denver apartments.
“We live in the same complex, but different units,” Karros said. “That’s necessary. I couldn’t live with the guy.”
But having Carrigg as a neighbor has its perks.
“Prior to him getting here, my off day would just be lying around and just doing nothing,” Karros said. “Now that he’s here, it’s just go, go, go. We got up, got breakfast, came back, went to the pool at our apartment complex, and then we went out and got dinner together.
“I was ready to call it a night and go to bed. But we have a pool table up in our common space at the complex. He wanted to play pool, so we stayed up for a while and played pool.”
Karros said it was good to shake up his routine.
“I think so many times, you get sucked into the baseball stuff,” Karros said. “And if the off days are just me, alone, chilling by myself, I get into my own head too much. It’s definitely good to get out of the house yesterday.”
The buddies have other plans, too.
“We are both pretty into house music … EDM (electric dance music),” Karros said. “It’s very popular here in Denver. So if we have any off days here, that would be cool to do. And we’ll probably go to Red Rocks at some point. But really, anything to get away from baseball for a little while.”
The Rockies drafted both players in 2023, Carrigg in the second round out of San Diego State and Karros in the fifth round out of UCLA. The buddies played together at Single-A Fresno, High-A Spokane, and Double-A Hartford. They roomed together every year during spring training in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Now that they are both in the majors, they have a built-in support system.
“It can help, big-time,” manager Warren Schaeffer said. “This whole game is all about relationships. It was huge for Cole to have Kyle already up here. I mean, it was big for me, as a coach, to come to the big leagues and know guys like “Giddy” (assistant bench coach Ron Gideon) and Andy (Gonzalez, the third base coach); guys that I had known before. It just makes you more comfortable. And when you are more comfortable, you can do your job better.”
Carrigg and Karros leaned on each other often while riding the minor league rollercoaster.
“He definitely talked me off the ledge sometimes when I wasn’t hitting or whatever the case may be,” Carrigg said. “There were a lot of incidents like that.”
Karros said that Carrigg’s emotional playing style has rubbed off on him.
“I know a focus of mine, this year, has been to play with more emotion and not just be here,” Karros said, holding out his hand to display steadiness. “I know a lot of people think it’s good to be even-keeled in this game, but I think playing with a little bit more fire is sometimes good for me.”
And it works the other way, too.
“Sometimes, in the minors, he would be riding the rollercoaster too much,” Karros said. “I would tell him, ‘Dude, this doesn’t matter. It’s not the end of the world if you have a bad day. Don’t put too much weight on it.”
