This story was excerpted from Kennedi Landry's Rangers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

ARLINGTON -- Evan Carter doesn¡¯t mince words when thinking about his disappointing 2024 season.

Carter entered the year as a rookie sensation.

He was one of MLB Pipeline¡¯s top five overall prospects after making his big league debut in September 2023. He hit .306 with a 1.058 OPS in 23 regular-season games, then shined on a national stage while appearing in all 17 games during the Rangers¡¯ World Series run. He hit .300 with a .917 OPS in the postseason.

So 2024 was a chance to be even better. But instead, Carter fell back down to earth.

Carter¡¯s struggles are well-documented. He got off to a slow start in April before a stress reaction in his back landed him on the injured list on May 28. After multiple attempts to ramp him back up, he was officially shut down for the year in August.

¡°It was terrible,¡± Carter said at Rangers Fan Fest. ¡°That's all you want as a ballplayer is to be available and be on the field and compete and help your teammates out. When you think you're close, and then you're not. You think you're close, and then you're not. Things just keep happening, mentally, it's really hard. Physically, obviously you don't feel good, but mentally, it's just kind of degrading at that point. This is pretty miserable. But I'm not the first person that's been there and done that either, though.¡±

Carter ultimately played just 45 games in 2024, slashing .188/.272/.361 with a .633 OPS.

He doesn¡¯t want to blame his struggles totally on the injury, but he notes that around the end of April and into May, his back went from feeling sore to legitimately hurting all day. While April wasn¡¯t a perfect month on the field, he really took a turn for the worse afterwards.

At that point, it was hard to ignore that the injury was clearly affecting Carter¡¯s swing. When he landed on the IL in May, he was riding a nine-game hitless streak (0-for-20) with an .053/.100/.053 slash line over his last 14 games.

¡°You don't realize it, and then next thing you know, you look up and it's May 20, and it's like, ¡®Holy smokes,¡¯¡± Carter explained. ¡°Then everything about my swing is different. I don't like anything about it. I'm hurting really, really bad now. I've probably made it worse than what it was if I would have stopped a month ago. It was just a slightly different kind of injury.¡±

That being said, Carter believes the entire situation was a learning process for him. Learning about his body and how to deal with injuries, learning about how to deal with a rehab stint mentally, and everything in between.

¡°Obviously, there was a ton of expectation for me that I put on myself of how [2024] was going to go,¡± Carter said. ¡°And then you go from being up here to basically as low as you can and missing a whole season, not really doing nearly as well as what you want. To be able to kind of experience that whole spectrum at such a young age in the beginning, I think, is only going to pay dividends going down the road.¡±

Looking forward to 2025, Carter¡¯s goal for the offseason was to get his swing back to the way it was when he was firing on all cylinders in 2023. He feels like he¡¯s done that. There are no longer any restrictions on what he can do on the field or in the weight room.

He¡¯s added some strength and put on a bit of weight. He¡¯s more than ready for the 2025 season.

¡°I get butterflies just thinking about it right now,¡± Carter said. ¡°When the season was over, and I'm kind of sitting here like, ¡®All right, I haven't played since May, so I want to play right now.¡¯ And the guys are ready for the offseason. Gosh, it's a long time coming. I'm really excited.¡±