Rangers place Evan Carter on injured list; Bring back Wyatt Langford, Nathan Eovaldi

The Rangers returned an outfielder Wyatt Langford and the right hand Nathan Eovaldi on the injured list, with Eovaldi starting tonight's contest. In the corresponding movements, outfielder Evan Carter stays in IL for 10 days due to hardening back while ready Yerry Rodríguez is selected. Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News was among those to relay the news ahead of the official announcement on X (link one and two).

Carter's back has been bothering him for several weeks. Between May 8 and May 18, he only made two plate appearances for the Rangers. He's been on the list a lot lately but hasn't been hit in nearly three weeks. It seems that back problems have contributed to him missing this year. He was hitting .236/.328/.472 through May 4 but has a hitting line of just .053/.100/.053 since then.

Coming into the season, it was possible to envision Texas having two regular players vying for the Rookie of the Year crown, but it hasn't played out that way thus far. Carter's latest slide dropped his season-long batting line to .188/.272/361. Langford, on the other hand, hit just .224/.295/.293 in 129 plate appearances before hitting the IL due to right hamstring strain. Langford will now have a chance to improve his numbers while Carter takes time off to get healthy later in the season.

Injuries have been a major issue in the Texas rotation all year. They knew that long ago Jacob deGrom again Tyler Mahle will be in the IL for the first half, as they each had Tommy John surgery midway through last season. Then Max Scherzer required back surgery in the offseason. There was a time when it looked like he could return in mid-May but he has been hampered by a sore thumb and his timeline is still up in the air.

Since the start of the season, Rangers have also seen Eovaldi, Jon Gray, Dane Dunning, Michael Lorenzen again Cody Bradford missing time on the injured list. All that remains Andrew Heaney as the only member that has not changed this year.

Some of those IL sessions have ended, including Eovaldi's today, so the current rotation consists of him, Heaney, Dunning, Lorenzen and José Ureña. A used club Gerson Garabito to start on Sunday and it looked like he might stick around for now as a long reliever.

Injuries up and down have seemed to keep the defending champions from getting out of the gate this year, as they are currently 25-29 this season. But the American League West has been surprisingly weak so far this year, with the Astros also struggling. The Rangers are second to the Mariners, with just 3.5 games to go and more to come.

Getting Eovaldi back on the mound clearly helps, as he had a 2.61 ERA before hitting IL with a groin strain and had a 3.63 ERA for the Rangers last year. Langford can step into the designated hitter role Adolis García has been in recently, pushing García back into the outfield at close range Leody Taveras and rotation of Ezequiel Durán, Robbie Grossman again Derek Hillhopefully Carter will jump back into that mix once he's healthy.