Major league pitching is hard. Unforgivingly hard.

Major league scouting departments are good. Really good.

Evan Carter is discovering both of those truths. When he came up last year, everything clicked right away. The Rangers brought him up out of desperation. Adolis Garcia was injured, the season was falling off the rails, they couldn’t stop the bleeding.

When Carter arrived, he had nothing to lose. No pressure. He wasn’t expected to be the savior or anything, just fill in until Garcia got back.

So, all he did was he hit, and walk, and display an uncanny eye for the strike zone. In twenty-three games, the twenty-year-old batted .305 with a remarkable .413 on-base percentage. His OPS+ was 183. He carried that magic into the postseason. All he did was become the savior.

But things change. Scouting departments start figuring how to get you out. Pitchers executed with precision. And, the next thing you know, baseball isn’t so easy.

After going 0-for-4 with three strikeouts in last night’s 4-0 loss to Seattle, which knocked the Rangers out of first place, Evan Carter sits at an even .200 average, fifteen hit in seventy-five at-bats. Worse, his OBP is .307. He started the season 0-for-15. If you take that awful start away, he would be 15-for-60, a .250 average, which looks much better but still isn’t lighting up the league. He’s had only five extra-base hits in his last fifteen games. 

The Rangers struggles aren’t on him. They knew going into the season they were turning putting a lot of faith into two rookies—Carter along with Wyatt Langford—and rookies have growing pains no matter what.

But Carter’s struggles are magnified when the rest of the team isn’t hitting. And even more so when he’s in the third slot in the batting order. That’s where production is supposed to come from. It’s not happening. And the Rangers offense continues to sputter.

Even after all his early struggles, Carter’s OPS+ sits a 100, meaning, he is an average major leaguer when it comes to offensive production. 

Not bad. Not great. Average.

That’s what major league pitching and major league scouting will do to a savior. They’ll turn him average. On a team that is .500. Everywhere you look, things are average.

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TODAY’S GAME: