How Evan Carter saved Rangers, caught Astros off guard: 'No fear in this kid'
Alex Bregman sent a deep drive tracking toward the seats in left field, and for a few seconds that probably felt like an eternity to Aroldis Chapman. Game 1 of the American League Championship Series was about to be the star reliever's latest Minute Maid Park misadventure.
But Evan Carter had prepared for this.
The rookie left fielder had never played at the Astros' stadium before, so in the days and hours ahead of the series, he picked the brain of someone who had. Carter examined the dimensions in left field with Robbie Grossman, a former Houston outfielder who had logged 116 career starts at the venue, throwing balls off the wall and figuring out how best to navigate the nooks and crannies and wacky dimensions of a wall that, seemingly out of nowhere, jets out more than 50 feet.
That practice paid off for the preternatural sensation, whose latest October feat helped the Rangers steal a 2-0 win to start the series.
"He's not in awe of anything," Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said of Carter. "Just no fear in this kid since he's come up."
Carter robbed Bregman of multiple potential extra-base hits Sunday, starting with a leaping grab down the left-field line in the first inning and continuing seven innings later with a game-saving play that required a different degree of spatial awareness.
Initially, it looked like Bregman might have delivered a game-tying home run in the eighth inning with a 365-foot drive. It would have been plenty deep enough to get out had it gone a few feet left, where Houston's Crawford Boxes reside. But it kept drifting right.
Bregman admired the swing for a moment, taking a couple steps out of the batter's box and dropping his bat as Chapman turned around and watched Carter begin his trek around the edge of the short wall in left-center and in front of the 366-feet sign, where he leaped to make the catch before doubling off José Altuve, who failed to step on second base as he sprinted to tag back up at first.
"Great job by him, first time in this building," Rangers second baseman Marcus Semien said.
As a rookie barely a month into his major-league career, it's Carter's first time in most buildings.
He celebrated his 21st birthday on Aug. 29, the same day of his first Triple-A game. He didn't make his MLB debut until Sept. 8. He has set the league on fire since, mostly with his advanced plate discipline and surprising pop, both of which gave the Rangers the spark they needed to secure their first postseason berth since 2016.
The rookie's play continued to elevate once the calendar turned to October.
Carter, a man jokingly dubbed by his teammates as the "little savior," has now recorded a hit in each of his six career postseason games — all Rangers wins — and reached base 14 times this postseason.
"I'm just having fun," Carter said. "That's what it's all about. We're playing a game, and it's a fun one, too."
He is making it look that way, both at the plate — where Carter started the scoring in Game 1 after legging out a double with his elite speed and coming around to score on a Jonah Heim single — and in the field. It was Carter's defense and calmness in chaos that helped the precocious rookie ensure Sunday night would not be the latest chapter in the Minute Maid misfortunes for Chapman, who lost Game 2 of the 2017 ALCS on a Carlos Correa walk-off double and watched the Astros advance to the World Series two years later when Altuve took him deep with a walk-off homer in Game 6 of the ALCS.
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With the help of Carter, who was only 15 at the time of Correa's 2017 blast, another potential playoff nightmare turned into a dream for Chapman and the Rangers, whose maligned bullpen is 2-0 with a 1.86 ERA this postseason.
"This is so much fun," Carter reiterated. "That's just all I think about. Where else would I want to be, man? This is awesome."
Rowan Kavner covers the Dodgers and MLB as a whole for FOX Sports. He previously was the Dodgers' editor of digital and print publications. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner.