we did a Rangers Reacts survey<\/a> on whether you were more excited about Langford or Carter. Langford won, but it was close, and there wasn\u2019t really a wrong answer. The future looked bright with those two manning the outfield.<\/p>\nHeading into spring training 2026, the picture is much different. Langford has had his ups and downs in his first two seasons, has had a couple of injured list stints, has struggled with consistency\u2026but he\u2019s still put up a slash line of .247\/.335\/.423, good for a 121 OPS+, in 1130 plate appearances, while stealing 41 bases in 50 attempts and, surprisingly for a guy whose defense was considered mediocre in college, has been excellent defensively. In two seasons, Langford has accumulated 9.5 bWAR, and didn\u2019t turn 24 until November.<\/p>\n
Carter, meanwhile\u2026Carter has had his ups and downs as well, but there have been more downs than ups. He missed most of 2024 due to back issues, started the 2025 season in the minors as he worked on a new swing to ease the pressures on his bat, got called up in early May, and ended up spending time on the injured list three different times, the final one being the result of being hit by a pitch and suffering a broken wrist, which ended his season.<\/p>\n
Carter ended up playing in just 63 games in the majors in 2025, after logging just 45 games in 2024.<\/p>\n
I saw someone describe 2025 as another lost season for Carter. I understand the sentiment, but I don\u2019t really see it that way.<\/p>\n
Yes, Carter played just 63 games, but unlike in 2024, he was pretty good in those 63 major league games. He slashed .247\/.336\/.392. He stole 14 bases in 16 attempts. He was excellent defensively.<\/p>\n
Carter\u2019s 1.9 bWAR for the season was the sixth highest among position players on the Rangers. And yes, that says something about the rest of the lineup, to a degree, but a 1.9 bWAR is generally considered a pretty decent season. Doing it Craig Gentry-style, in just 220 plate appearances, well, that makes it all the more remarkable.<\/p>\n
(And if you don\u2019t like bWAR, Carter put up a 1.4 fWAR, which, again, is pretty impressive for 63 games and 220 plate appearances).<\/p>\n
The concerns about Carter coming up were whether he could stay healthy and whether he would hit lefties. Those concerns haven\u2019t changed. The back issues, which have plagued him his entire career, were what had him spending the first six weeks of the 2025 season in AAA. He spent two weeks on the injured list in 2025 with a quad strain, and then, as mentioned above, missed the final month-plus with the broken wrist. Even if you want to chalk up the broken wrist as a fluke, the durability concerns with Carter remain.<\/p>\n
And lefties? Carter was 2 for 23 with 4 walks and a HBP against lefties in 2025, an .087\/.250\/.087 slash line. For his career, Carter has an .083\/.191\/.083 slash line against lefthanded pitchers in 68 plate appearances. Evan Carter has yet to record an extra base hit against a lefthanded pitcher in the majors. (The regular season, anyway \u2014 he doubled off of Jake Diekman in the playoffs in 2023).<\/p>\n
But even with those concerns, Evan Carter is a special player. He\u2019s put up a 4.1 bWAR in 131 career games, all of them before he turned 23 years old (his 23rd birthday was the day the Rangers moved him to the 60 day injured list last year).<\/p>\n
Maybe he\u2019s always going to have durability concerns. Me, I\u2019d be happy if the Rangers could get 130 healthy games out of him per season.<\/p>\n
And maybe he\u2019s always going to struggle against lefties. I have no doubt he\u2019s going to put in the effort to improve against them, though, and again, he\u2019s just 23 years old. Growth and improvement should be expected.<\/p>\n
Maybe I\u2019m just setting myself up for disappointment. Maybe the Grady Sizemore comps are all too accurate.<\/p>\n
But I\u2019m keeping the faith in Evan Carter. I\u2019m asking the Baseball Gods to keep him healthy. Not even Cal Ripken Jr. healthy, or even Marcus Semien healthy. As I said, I\u2019ll take 130 games a year from him.<\/p>\n
Just give us that. Give us 130 healthy games a year from Evan Carter. Do that, and we will get to experience a special player.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With the 2025 Texas Rangers season having come to an end, we shall be, over the course of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2393],"tags":[52311,5,4,149,1567,69,3240],"class_list":{"0":"post-540877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas-rangers","8":"tag-2025-season-in-review","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-rangers","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-texas-rangers","14":"tag-texasrangers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115968312861172937","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}