Devin Carter leads team in RBI, home runs

Ask Devin Carter what it is like making a statement on the Sea Lion’s baseball team and he’ll say, “I just want to win.”

Like many of his teammates, he is working toward recruitment into the professional league after college. Unlike most athletes, however, the Southern California native didn’t spend his early years playing a variety of sports.

“I decided I would play baseball at a pretty young age,” said Carter. “I figured out that it was what I wanted to do [and] I didn’t spend a lot of time playing other sports.”

Carter was recruited by Pepperdine University out of Temecula Valley High School. Although he began his collegiate baseball career with the Waves, he decided to make a change to give himself more experience on the field.

After transferring to PLNU, Carter made quite an impact on the team. The right fielder is batting .417 and is leading the team in RBI’s and home runs.

Carter said he focuses on getting the small things right as a way of maintaining consistency in his play.

“The small things are such a priority,” said Carter. “It’s a game of inches. There are so many different variables that come in that everything’s so magnified in any given situation…you’ve got to put in the work off the field and do the small things right.”

Assistant Coach Ben Rosenthal said the program Carter came from at Pepperdine helped to solidify his winning mentality and has had as much an influence on his game as his natural talents.

“He’s won [before], Pepperdine was a winning program, so he brings that kind of energy,” said Rosenthal. “[He knows] what it takes to win even when we’re down. He brings…some of those intangibles.”

The junior kinesiology major found the transition into PLNU was fairly easy and explained that, for him, the schools are actually very similar.

“In classrooms, it’s so eerily the same,” said Carter. “I didn’t skip a beat coming into this school as far as school goes.”

The small class sizes and close professor to student ratio were a few things Carter found to be the same.

Sophomore first baseman Ryan Garcia said Carter’s personality and playing style have meshed well with the team. After watching Carter practice early and observing his drive during practices and games, Garcia said the team has come to respect him and he has turned into a natural leader.

“His fire and will to win [set him apart]. He’s a vocal leader. Before games he has something to say and everyone listens up,” said Garcia. “He just has that mentality.”

His desire to attain perfection in the nuances of his game is one of the reasons Rosenthal knows Carter will continue to improve after getting off to an impressive start this season.

“He listens. His desire to improve and to be good is where it should be,” said Rosenthal. “He’s all-in all the time; that’s why we like him.”