The Rangers have reinstated outfielder Wyatt Langford and right-hander Nathan Eovaldi from the injured list, with Eovaldi starting tonight’s contest. In corresponding moves, outfielder Evan Carter lands on the 10-day IL due to back tightness while righty Yerry Rodríguez has been optioned out. Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News was among those to relay the news prior to the official announcement on X (link one and two).
Carter’s back has been bugging him for a few weeks. Between May 8 and May 18, he only took two plate appearances for the Rangers. He’s been in the lineup more regularly of late but still hasn’t had a hit in about three weeks. It seems like the back problems have contributed to his lackluster results on the year. He was hitting .236/.328/.472 through May 4 but has a batting line of just .053/.100/.053 since then.
Coming into the season, it was possible to envision Texas having two regular players battling each other for the Rookie of the Year crown, but it hasn’t played out that way thus far. Carter’s recent slide has dropped his season-long batting line to .188/.272/361. Langford, meanwhile, hit just .224/.295/.293 through 129 plate appearances before landing on the IL due to a right hamstring strain. Langford will now get a chance to improve his numbers while Carter takes some time to rest up and get healthy for later in the season.
Injuries have also been a key storyline for the Texas rotation all year long. They knew long ago that Jacob deGrom and Tyler Mahle would be on the IL for the first half, as each of them underwent Tommy John surgery in the middle of last season. Then Max Scherzer required back surgery in the offseason. There was a time when it seemed like he could come back in mid-May but he has been delayed by thumb soreness and his timeline is still up in the air.
Since the season started, the Rangers have also seen Eovaldi, Jon Gray, Dane Dunning, Michael Lorenzen and Cody Bradford miss time on the injured list. All that has left Andrew Heaney as the only consistent member of the rotation this year.
Some of those IL stints have now ended, including Eovaldi’s today, so the rotation currently consists of him, Heaney, Dunning, Lorenzen and José Ureña. The club used Gerson Garabito for a spot start on Sunday and it seemed he could stick around for now as a long reliever.
The various injuries up and down the roster have seemingly prevented the defending champions from charging out of the gate this year, as they are currently 25-29 on the season. But the American League West is surprisingly weak so far this year, as the Astros are also struggling. The Rangers are second to the Mariners, just 3.5 games back and still very much in it.
Getting Eovaldi back on the mound is obviously helpful, as he had a 2.61 ERA prior to hitting the IL with a groin strain and had a 3.63 ERA for the Rangers last year. Langford could slot into the designated hitter role that Adolis García has been in recently, pushing García back to the outfield next to Leody Taveras and a rotation of Ezequiel Durán, Robbie Grossman and Derek Hill, with Carter hopefully jumping back into that mix once he’s healthy.
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