ARLINGTON -- Evan Carter likes to believe baseball owes him one sometimes. But he also owes baseball sometimes, too. So when going through an 0-for-15 skid over his first five games to start the season, that¡¯s all he thought of: Baseball owes him a couple.

¡°I've always thought of it that way of like ¡®OK, I just got a broken bat single, I owe baseball,¡¯¡± he explained. ¡°So now I'm probably going to smoke one and it's gonna get caught. Then if I smoke one and it gets caught, it¡¯s ¡®OK, baseball owes me, now I'm gonna get a broken bat single.¡¯ I¡¯ve just kind of felt like I'm owed a couple right now. It comes back round.¡±

Whatever he was owed from that hitless streak to begin the 2024 season, baseball has definitely given it back to him.

Following the Rangers¡¯ 7-2 win over the Astros on Saturday night at Globe Life Field, Carter is now 5-for-9 with a walk in his last two games, both against Houston. He helped power an offense that was stuck in a one-run game for most of the night before a four-run eighth inning broke it open for Texas.

¡°To start the season, I'm sure he was getting a little frustrated,¡± manager Bruce Bochy said of Carter¡¯s 0-fer. ¡°With how much confidence he has, it says a lot about him that he knows he's gonna have to deal with these. We talked about the team as a whole, you're gonna have those moments during the season. What¡¯s important is how you handle it.¡±

Carter clearly handled it better than anybody could have imagined for a 21-year-old who has played just 30 big league games. Even as he struggled to knock one in for a hit, Carter still amassed six walks to just two strikeouts in those first five games.

He stayed within his approach, knowing things would fall his way eventually.

¡°He handled it great,¡± said hitting coach Tim Hyers. ¡°I¡¯ve been around a lot of young hitters that lose that plate discipline while their swing is not the best. They become swing happy, and they lose both parts of the game. What was encouraging and what tells you a lot about his background and who he is and what he's made out of is that he didn't lose that part. The swing wasn't there, but he didn't lose that part. And that's really difficult, being a young player.¡±

Carter isn¡¯t one to get particularly antsy over a mini-slump, but he admitted that sometimes you just forget what it feels like to run hard out of the box.

He ultimately went back and looked at some stat lines from last year¡¯s All-Stars, and there were three 0-for-25 streaks among them at some point throughout the year according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Carter¡¯s 0-for-15 slump just happened to come at the beginning of the year, when the average on the scoreboard said .000 instead of dropping from .270 to .235.

¡°If the worst it gets is four or five games without a hit and I throw in six walks, then I'll take that for a career,¡± Carter said. ¡°That¡¯s pretty good. ¡­ You can't really control what happens when you put the ball in play. You just have to control what you can control, don't chase and make good swing decisions. Everything happens from there.¡±

Hyers, who was the Red Sox¡¯s hitting coach from 2018-21, praised Carter¡¯s mental makeup through the highs and lows of his young big league career.

His hit tool is phenomenal in and of itself, but it's times like these where Carter¡¯s elite plate discipline shines through. It¡¯s what allows him to be such a quality big leaguer at such a young age.

¡°Mookie Betts was that way from the day he stepped into the big leagues. It¡¯s those guys that see the ball really well. Marcus Semien sees it well. Carter, those elite guys see the ball early out of the hand and he¡¯s in that category. He reminds me of those types of guys. They just don¡¯t panic. You can tell, it doesn't matter if he has two strikes or no strikes, he still kind of has the same heartbeat. And that¡¯s what the best hitters do.¡±