'I'm good now': Carter believes back problems in the past
Kennedi Landry
@kennlandrySURPRISE, Ariz. -- There are a lot of questions when it comes to Evan Carter going into 2025. Can he hit left-handed pitching? Will he start in center field? Will he start anywhere in the outfield in general?
The most important question, though, is if he¡¯s healthy. The answer to that question likely informs all the others.
Carter¡¯s struggles in 2024 were well-documented. He hit just .188/.272/.361 in 45 games before a stress reaction in his back landed him on the injured list on May 28. He and the club attempted multiple ramp-ups in the following months before he was officially shut down for the year in August.
Now, Carter believes the back issues are behind him for the time being, though he declined to share many details of the diagnosis of his back injury.
¡°We know what [the issue] is,¡± Carter said ahead of the Rangers¡¯ first full-squad workout on Monday. ¡°I'm good now. I feel like it's one of those things that I kind of want to keep it personal, I guess. We don't feel like it's the best for everybody to really put it out there and know exactly what's going on. It's kind of personal to me, and we're just going to keep it that way. I can't change it. It is what it is. It's part of me now, but we've got a plan.¡±
Carter said it was a lot of trial and error to figure out exactly what caused the issues with his back. Much of the end of the regular season and the start of the offseason was spent figuring it out. He¡¯s happy with the progress. Now he feels like he¡¯s in a good spot to take the next step on the field in 2025.
With that has come a change in his daily routines. Manager Bruce Bochy said the staff will have to keep a watchful eye over the 22-year-old. There will have to be open communication between everybody involved in order to keep him healthy.
It would be naive to say there is no concern at all, Bochy said. But everybody is confident in the routine and communication so that Carter¡¯s back doesn¡¯t flare up like that again.
¡°I'm not going to be stupid and go out there and swing 200 times, but that's not me as a person anyways,¡± Carter said. ¡°I've always dialed it back. My routine's long. My routine was long before and after. I'm trying to be as smart as I can. ¡ It¡¯s a lot of different posture realignment stuff. A lot of just making sure that I'm hot and moving the certain ways that I want to move. I just want to kind of reset my body back to the way it should be, so I can recover correctly.¡±
Now the health has got to translate to performance on the field.
Carter was the Rangers¡¯ top prospect at the end of 2023 and into '24, according to MLB Pipeline.
He made his big league debut in September 2023, hitting .306 with a 1.058 OPS in 23 regular-season games. He broke out in the postseason, while appearing in all 17 games during the Rangers¡¯ World Series run. He hit .300 with a .917 OPS over that time.
The Rangers need that Evan Carter back.
¡°My whole offseason was about getting my swing back to the way it was in '23,¡± he said. ¡°That's what I feel like I'm at right now. That's the way I feel like I'm best. ¡ The majority of the season that I got to play last year was just me and [the hitting coaches] every single day in the cage, saying, ¡®Here's video from '23, why can't we do this?¡¯ My body just couldn¡¯t do that. It was the most frustrating thing.
¡°I'm stubborn, so I felt like I could keep playing. It got to the point eventually where it¡¯s like, ¡®Holy crap, it hurts.' I¡¯m not helping myself. I'm hurting the team. It was not a good situation. I would definitely say it was not good for a while. We were fighting that for a while. I'm happy to be back to the way it was.¡±