ARLINGTON — It’s not been a great year to be considered part of the Rangers’ young core of position players. Leody Taveras was jettisoned a month in. Josh Jung has been both demoted and benched. And now Evan Carter, who began the season in the minors, will end it on the injured list.
As the club may need to start pivoting to the future, the questions are going to start becoming about how, where and if those core pieces fit.
Only one drafted and developed Ranger hitter seems to have made progress this year: Wyatt Langford.
Perhaps it is time he becomes the center of their attention.
Rangers
Emphasis on center.
We’ll get back to that in a moment.
On Friday, the Rangers announced that Carter, the club’s expected primary center fielder, will miss the rest of the season with a fractured right wrist. This was all before Langford started the game-winning rally in 4-3 walkoff win over Cleveland with a hustling double to start the ninth. He homered, too. Pushed his season OPS to .766 in the process.
Carter was hit by a 94 mph fastball from lefty Daniel Lynch IV on Thursday at Kansas City. The irony of the moment would almost be humorous if it wasn’t so tragic: The Rangers have rarely exposed Carter to lefties this year because they wanted to “protect” him. They meant his performance more than his physical being. But this is the Rangers and if there is an arm to be broken, it’s gonna happen. See Jung, Jon Gray and Joc Pederson in the last two years alone.
It’s a terrible development for Carter, who wasn’t available Friday in the Rangers’ clubhouse before the game. Actually, bad word choice. It’s terrible for Carter’s development. He’s spent parts of three seasons in the majors and has precious few at-bats to show for it. He’s played 131 games – not even a full season’s worth – and doesn’t yet have 500 MLB plate appearances. Even though he only turns 23 next week, he’s lost and continues to lose valuable development time.
“The one thing you want with a young player is to get lots of playing time,” manager Bruce Bochy said Friday before the Rangers opened a series against Cleveland that seemed a lot more important a week ago. “That’s how you get better. You get those reps defensively, running the bases, all of those things.
“I’ve talked about that before with him. He is so young with experience. He helped us win a World Series. But all those reps in every facet of the game, those are so important. I hate for him to be losing it. But he’ll have the winter to get healthy and ready for spring training and we’ll try to ramp him up. But he missed a lot of time last year.”
He stopped there. He didn’t need to go further. In spring training, he looked “rusty,” according to the Rangers, and he began the season back in the minor leagues. Can’t rule out the possibility of a repeat.
Also, next year, there will, right or wrong, be lingering concerns about the number of injuries he’s had, especially the maintenance of a chronic back problem. Nor will the Rangers have any better answers on whether he’s best used as a platoon player, albeit the strong side of a platoon, because of his struggles against lefties (Carter’s career OPS against lefties is .275 in all of 68 at-bats).
All of which brings us back to Langford. And whether the Rangers might not use this month to take a long look at the possibility of putting Langford in center and leaving him there. He is, after all, the more established player at this point.
Here is how things have worked for Langford the last two years: He’s been the left fielder. Except when Carter was out or off. Then he shifted to center. It’s added up. Carter has 56 career starts in center field; Langford 41. When the year is done, even if Langford splits time in center the rest of the way with Alejandro Osuna and just-recalled Michael Helman, he’s likely to have as much MLB experience in center as Carter.
The Rangers believe both players are capable in center, but that Carter is more suited for the position. Maybe it’s because he’s lanky and thin. Or maybe they feel Langford is more suited for left. He does have a big body and Rangers history, dating to the Josh Hamilton Era has been to put big bodies on the corners to reduce the wear and tear on the body.
“Wyatt’s done a great job out in center,” Bochy said. “And Carter has done a tremendous job, too. But I think when you look at Carter, you look at the skill set, and he’s going to be one of the tops in the league as far as metrics and getting to balls and things like that.”
Except that so far, he’s not been better than Langford. According to defensive metrics, at least those on FanGraphs, Langford has been the better defensive option. Despite having 200 fewer innings in center than Carter, Langford has a 4.2 rating in FanGraphs’ defensive metric, compared with Carter’s 2.2. Langford and Carter have the same total defensive runs saved in center despite Langford having half as much time out there. Now, we include the disclaimer here, that of all metrics, there seems to be more discrepancy in those related to fielding than anything else.
“They can both play center field,” president of baseball operations Chris Young said. “We like having versatile outfielders.”
It may also ultimately not be about center field at all. While both can play center, Langford may also be the better defender in left, which many baseball people will tell you makes for harder reads on balls. Yet, when it comes time to put together a lineup, a team that can have an athletic workhorse franchise cornerstone player in center usually does.
When it gets down to it, the Rangers would love for their biggest issue to be figuring out how to deploy two healthy, productive, athletic outfielders. At the moment, though, they have only one. Maybe it’s time to consider Wyatt Langford there for the long term, too.
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