For 21-Year-Old Evan Carter, the Rangers’ Playoff Pressure Is the Least of His Big-League Worries

PHOENIX — In the middle of September, Rangers first baseman Nate Lowe went with a few teammates to a casino in Cleveland and saw something that shook him to his core. Left fielder Evan Carter, who had recently turned 21, handed over his driver’s license—for the first time, he later told them. That was bad enough. But what really grabbed Lowe’s attention was the orientation of that driver’s license: It was vertical.

“[We didn’t] rip him apart,” Lowe says, laughing. “But it was definitely a point of focus.”

Carter all but blushes now. “It still is [vertical],” he admits. “I haven’t had time to get it renewed.”

Carter debuted in September and almost immediately became a key member of Rangers as they charged toward a pennant. He came up as a center fielder, so he plays excellent defense in left. He hit .306 and slugged .645 in 23 regular-season games, and has been just as good in the playoffs. He reached base in his first six postseason plate appearances, and nine of his first 12. (“I don’t even know if he knows that he’s in the big leagues,” manager Bruce Bochy said during that stretch. “This guy has such a calmness about him.”) Carter hit a two-run double in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series to put the game out of reach. He has reached base in every game of the World Series.

“His swing and his baseball skills, they’re beyond his years,” says second baseman Marcus Semien.

When the Rangers see Carter on the field, they forget how old he is. But then the game ends, and they remember.

The Rangers took Carter out of Elizabethton (Tenn.) High School in the second round of the 2020 draft, so he only played parts of three seasons in the minors before he got to Arlington, Texas: ’21 with the Low A Down East Wood Ducks., ’22 with the High A Hickory Crawdads and the last week of the season with the Double A Frisco RoughRiders, then most of this season back in Frisco. Elements of major league life keep surprising him.

He recently confided in Lowe, 28, that he was worried his sliding shorts were developing a hole.

“I said, ‘The equipment manager makes a yearly salary to make sure that doesn’t happen,’” says Lowe.

Semien, 33, has had similar conversations with Carter.

“We don’t need to pack our bags,” Semien says. “We don’t need to do certain things in the hotel. They’ll do that for you.”

Offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker laughs every time his phone buzzes with a question from Carter—which it does a lot.

“We build our environment so guys have ownership over everything they do,” says Ecker, 37. “If they want to hit BP, they can. He still, to this day, he’ll text me: ‘Is it O.K. if I don’t hit BP today?’ He asks permission for a lot of things.”

Socially, Carter fits right in—until he doesn’t. Catcher Austin Hedges, 31, recently tried to quote Zoolander to Carter. Nothing. He tried Ace Ventura. Nothing.

“There’s a lot of those movies that he hasn’t seen,” he says sadly. (For the record: Zoolander came out in 2001. Ace Ventura came out in 1995. Carter was born in 2002.)

Carter is also a very poor player of Pluck, the card game ubiquitous in baseball clubhouses and just about nowhere else. “It’s like, I made those same mistakes three months ago, but I don’t want to tell you about that,” says 25-year-old third baseman Josh Jung with a laugh.

But Carter’s biggest problems are logistical. He got married last December—he and his wife, Kaylen, began dating at 11—and neither is old enough to rent a car without paying a hefty fee, even if Carter had managed to renew his license. So they walk and Uber from the hotel where they’ve been living near the ballpark. 

“One night I had a bunch of bags, and [team staffers] were like: ‘Oh, we’ll put you on the golf cart and drive you over to the hotel,’ so they just whipped me over there,” Carter gushes. “I was like: ‘Oh, that’s sick. That’s cool.’ It kept me from having to walk all the way over there with a bunch of luggage.”

Ecker recently asked him if he had thought about housing for next year.

“I have to see if I have a good spring training so I can make the team,” Carter said. “Then I might look at property here.”

Ecker just nodded, but now he laughs. “‘Buddy, I’m pretty sure you’re on the team,” he says. He’ll let Carter figure that out on his own, though. By next summer, he’ll be wise. He’ll be almost 22.