Evan Carter Has the Texas Rangers Poised to Win the Lone Star State — And Make the World Series
Carter, a 21-year-old rookie phenom, will be the Rangers’ secret weapon as they try to upset the Houston Astros in the ALCS.
When the Houston Astros and the Texas Rangers meet in the American League Championship Series, their division rivalry will spill over into something much bigger: The battle for the Lone Star State will also be a battle for a World Series berth.
The betting and statistical odds favor the Astros, giving Houston a 59% chance to beat the Rangers and advance to a third consecutive Fall Classic (and fifth in seven years). That’s all based on history, head-to-head performance, and respective talent. But the Rangers have a secret weapon the Astros have never seen before. To pull off an upset, they’ll need to rely on rookie sensation Evan Carter, the only core hitter on either side of this series who had zero appearances during the teams’ head-to-head regular season matchups.
The 21-year-old left fielder didn’t make his MLB debut until Sept. 8, two days after the Astros had put a final regular-season beatdown on the Rangers. Carter wasn’t a major leaguer yet when Houston outscored Texas 39-10 in that three-game sweep, bolstering a head-to-head tiebreaker that ended up giving the Astros the AL West crown over the Rangers. He also wasn’t around for most of the late-season swoon that threatened to put Texas on a list of historic collapses.
Houston is making its seventh consecutive appearance in the league championship series — the second-longest streak in MLB history, trailing only the 1991-99 Atlanta Braves. The team is also gunning for its third straight trip to the World Series and its second championship in a row. The Rangers have no such illustrious past: They’re now making their first playoff appearance since 2016, and they’d only been to the ALCS twice during failed runs to the World Series in 2010 and 2011.
This season, the Astros dominated the Rangers. While the teams ended up with identical 90-72 records, the difference in head-to-head performance was stark. At 9-4, Houston had the best record of any opponent against Texas; with the inverse of that, Texas was tied for the second-worst performance of any opponent against Houston (only the lowly Oakland A’s were worse).
In this Texas-sized showdown, however, Carter has a clean slate.
All Carter has done since becoming a big leaguer is hit .306/.413/.645 over the regular season’s final three-plus weeks — good for a 1.058 OPS that led all rookies with at least 50 plate appearances — and then absolutely knock the cover off the ball in the postseason.
Among all qualified playoff batters this year, Carter’s 1.476 OPS ranks third behind only the unstoppable Yordan Alvarez (1.784) and fellow Ranger Corey Seager (1.537). When your only peers at the plate are one of the greatest lefty sluggers ever (seriously, look it up) and an MVP candidate, that’s an incredible postseason for anybody, let alone a rookie who was in Triple-A until early September.
Carter’s defense in the outfield ranked among the best in baseball during his short major-league stint in the regular season. Among outfielders with at least 100 innings played, Carter had the third-best rate of defensive runs saved per 1,200 innings (according to Baseball-Reference), and he ranked fourth among left fielders in MLB’s Statcast Outs Above Average metric for September. During the postseason, Carter has provided highlight-reel material such as this diving grab to rob Isaac Paredes in the wild-card round:
It’s a lot to ask of any player to be the sole difference-maker in a playoff series, and there are plenty of stars who could steal the limelight from Carter. But there’s also no overstating the importance of a 1.476 OPS hitter emerging in the middle of the Rangers’ lineup, a guy who is a big plus with the glove as well. Showing postseason composure well beyond his years, Carter has the ability to tilt this series in Texas’ favor — and the Rangers will need every bit of it to represent their state in the World Series.
Filed under: Baseball
Original story: Evan Carter Has the Texas Rangers Poised to Win the Lone Star State — And Make the World Series